Sweet potatoes

In addition to fruit and berries, we are expanding our vegetable range to become the third pillar of the Lubera Edibles young plant programme. This step is only logical: if our love for young plants literally goes through the stomach, then vegetables are naturally part of that. In addition, interest in growing your own high-quality vegetables in the garden or on the balcony is growing steadily – and this is exactly where our breeding work comes in.

Do you only know us as specialists in softfruit young  plants? Then we have a surprise for you. Because Lubera Edibles stands – as the name suggests – for everything that is delicious to eat. And that no longer includes just fruit and berries. With our innovative assortment of vegetable young plants, we are taking the next logical step – surprising, diverse and perfectly tailored to the home garden.

Lubera.com, the online store of our sister company, has been selling premium vegetable plants for several years. These are grown in 1.3-litre square pots, packaged with care and then reliably shipped to customers. The price for most plants is currently around EUR 5.50, with a price increase of 10% planned for 2025. But how big is this market? What are Lubera's experiences in general? We are not initially discussing which companies could produce these young plants and where they are sold, we...

When the Lubera® breeding team started breeding sweet potatoes a few years ago, the original and real focus was on improved, sweeter yielding varieties for hobby cultivation in the vegetable garden. During the selection work in the seedlings, however, we quickly noticed that the diversity in leaf colour and shape was quite large. Thus, it became clear relatively quickly that it was also worthwhile to select for these characteristics. This is what we did and we are just about to release the first...

How can you, I thought. But Markus " Merciless" Kobelt didn't let up: Yes, exactly, to invest 1-2 days with a photo shoot in the hottest August of all times (?) on the current breeding fields in Buchs, that was his latest job to me. Now I do like to take photos. But I prefer slightly overcast skies - of course just so that the photos turn out as good as possible, certainly not because of me... But what did I notice during the photo safari, armed with the camera and with the eyes of...

Hardly any vegetable is currently as trendy as the sweet potato. With an annual per capita consumption of around half a kilo, the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is far from dominating the conventional potato (Solanum tuberosum), but the potential is there. In order to utilise this potential, at least in home gardens, we are launching the Sugaroots® sweet potato series for the 2022 spring season. These varieties were bred and selected by our partner company Lubera® in Switzerland.

Sweet potatoes, Ipomoea batatas, are one of the most important crops internationally. In terms of yield, they rank number 15 among all crops, and among the root crops they are in 3rd place after potatoes and cassava. Their genetic origin and thus the place of greatest diversity is in subtropical to tropical Central America, but there are also genetic centres in South America (Peru) and in Polynesia, where the large tuberous roots stopped on their journey around the world. Exactly how sweet...

As in so many industries and areas of everyday life, the trend is moving towards more online-based advertising and paperless communication. However, at the moment, we do not want to do without print media entirely. Last autumn, for example, we were already able to present our current young plant catalogue for 2020. Many of you have already received the printed version and at the same time our young plant catalogue is also available at luberaedibles.com in the download area.

As the new company name, Lubera Edibles®, already suggests, we are expanding our range of young plants from classic soft fruits, such as raspberries, blackberries or blueberries, to anything that can be consumed in any way. This includes edible fruits like kiwis, apples and pears. Or edible roots such as horseradish, Jerusalem artichoke or potato. But also edible leaves, petioles, flowers such as sea kale, tea or rhubarb. We would like to introduce our most important groups of crops in the...