A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 Potatos growing fruit

I have 4 Yukon Gold potato plants that are producing fruit on the leaves. They look like small tomatoes, there are 4 or 5 to a cluster.

Any Ideas??

Pat...I guess you know they're related. I've never seen the "tomatoes" develop to much larger than pea or marble size, and my guess would be that you should pick them off so the plants don't spend all their energy making seed.

These are about as big as cherry tomatos.

My PC is still down, it has been a rough month, as soon as it is up and working again, I will upload some pictures.

Pat

dont eat that fruit on top of your potatoes.

i understand it is poison????? Careful.

barb aka dodge

OH YEAH! I MEANT TO SAY, DON'T EAT THE FRUIT!
Thank you, Dodge, aka barb!
Unless you'd like to see what you can grow from the seeds, I'm pretty sure the fruits should be picked...and destroyed. It may not make any real difference in the long run, but the energy would be better used in producing 'taters. I wish I had planted a few hundred feet of 'taters this year, I had one serving from my meager planting, of new potatoes. I put more time and space into it in years past.

This is interesting. potatoes make tomatoes?

potatoes may tomatoes...huh.

I wish I would not have planted potatoes this year, nor corn. Since I have planed my wife and I decided to do the atkins, so those veggies are out of our diet for now

They're not the same thing as a tomato, but potatoes and tomatoes are related. They're both from the nightshade family. All nightshades produce round fruits. You may not always notice the fruits on potato plants. If you think about it, though, any plant has some way of producing seed, so of course, potatoes do, to. It's just that we don't grow them for their fruit, the potatoes are actually modified stems.

Thanks for the info, that was neat to learn.
Oh, I get it, the "tomato" comes after the white flower.
I've never grown potatoes, just have seen pictures.

I will post some pictures soon

I have my PC fixed!!!

Here are some pictures of the potato plants:

Wow! Pat. If those were real tomatoes you'd be doing great. Have you harvested any new potatoes?BTW...are your tomatoes setting fruit yet? Out of 30 some plants, I have one with 2 tiny fruits on it. This heat is making for a bad year for tomatoes.

Yes I have quite a few tomatoes on the vines.

I am going to dig under the potato plants and check for spuds. Somebody told me that hard soil will make potato plants grow fruit, so I am going to find out.


Update: I went out and dug under the plants and they are growing 'tators.

pepper I'm not doing much better than you. Figure I have 5 or 6 set on so far. Of course some of mine are later. Not worried yet. A lot of time I don't get a good set here till August. My potatoes are looking the best ever but no fruit like above. Hope your tomatoes start setting. All of mine so far are on hybrids. JD