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GardenRN
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potato blooms

My potato plants are starting to bloom. Should I be snipping them off as with onions, garlic, etc? Or do they need to bloom to get the potatoes going?

DoubleDogFarm
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No need to cut them off. In a few weeks, you should have little "New" potatoes. :D Dig down carefully and harvest a few for supper! Yum


Eric

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jal_ut
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Not necessary to do anything with them. If you want you can harvest the fruits when they are ripe and collect the seed then grow potatoes from seed. The fruits look like little green tomatoes.

[img]https://donce.lofthouse.com/jamaica/potato_from%20_seed.jpg[/img]

If you grow potatoes from seed the tubers you get the first year will be small like those in this picture. This is part of a potato seed experiment. There are several varieties in this picture. There is a few fruits in the picture too.

When you see the blossoms, there is usually some small tubers if you want to harvest some new potatoes. I usually just poke a finger in the ground until I feel a tuber, then lift it out and let the plant grow some more.

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GardenRN
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very cool! Thanks for the info guys. I'll definitely try to get some sees and give it a try. I figure the plants that were able to bloom and produce sees did the best in my garden right?

I like working in that direction.

TZ -OH6
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Don't worry too much it you don't see berrys. Most commercial varieties are more or less sterile, and some early varieties rarely even flower.

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GardenRN
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ok...but no berries means no seeds right? Or will the be in the dried flowers regardless?

Also...are the flowers asexual?

TZ -OH6
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A potato berry is equivalent to a tomato (also a berry--they are in the same genus, Solanum)... seeds are inside.

Many potatoes have either sterile/mostly sterile pollen or the flowers tend to abort...or other problems like flower is not receptive to pollen when pollen is released so self pollination won't happen. There are some historical reasons for this having to do with the same disfunctional varieties being used over and over again as parents because of their other qualities. Traditional potatoes in Peru and Chile don't have that problem, but they also do not set same size perfect shape spuds that make the perfect chip or fry. Oddball types like blue potatoes are closer to the ancestral varieties and tend to set berries more easily. Katahdin will self pollinate and set berries, and although Yukon Gold is made up of a large percentage of Katahdin, it is very early and doesn't like to flower unless stressed, so berries are rare.

On this site you can look up your variety and it sometimes tells you if it will set berries. Here is a summary of numbers of varieties that will and won't set berries.

https://www.europotato.org/display_character.php?char_no=23&character=Berries

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GardenRN
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nice reference site! I'll definitely bookmark that one. Unfortunately for now, I don't know what kinds I planted other than "white" and "red" lol. Gues it's a wait and see game now.

Interestingly enough though, all of the white potatoes I planted in one section of the garden have flowers, and the ones in the other section have none. And they are from the same bunch. And as it stands, the potatoes in the crummier, more clay soil are the ones with the flowers. Maybe the clay is giving them more of the acid that they like.

TZ -OH6
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There is a very high probablility that your reds are Red Pontiac or its improved version, Red Lasoda. I haven't got berries off of them.



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