earlier on today i was reading a thread on potatoes from someone who had found a tomato looking object on their spuds, well i have found one too and i need to know what the thread said about it ;D
If you are talking about a tomato type looking thing hanging from the potato its the potatoes seed pod.
It probably said it is a potato seed and you can't eat them because they are poisonous but you can plant them as long as your potatoes don't succumb to any viruses this year.
but does it mean anything about the state of my spuds, ie are they due to be picked and should i leave the seed thingy on or take it off?
thanks ;D
Some people say that if you remove them, you increase the yield. Their main purpose in life though is to produce new varieties. Breeders pick them when ripe and sow them. The following year, they sample the potatoes - there will be a number of new varieties from each pod, and any that satisfy the breeders requirements, early/lateness, taste, yield, disease, keeping qualities, resistance etc, might be used to produce seed potatoes which may eventually make it on to the open market.
I have fruit on my spuds this year! on the mains... does that mean I can ripen the seed and plant it? how do you grow potatoes from seed?????
Try sowing it in a pot and see what happens. People used to start new varieties from seed every time the old one got too virus-ridden, so it can't be that hard.
To save potato seed:
Select your heathiest plants.
When the potato seedpods are soft like a ripe tomato harvest them.
Put the fruits in a kitchen blender, cover with water and blend just enough to break up the seedpods and liberate the 100's of seeds contained within them.
Leave this mixture in a plastic bowl to ferment for 24 hours to kill off diseases.
The seeds will sink to the bottom (they look similar to tomato seeds).
Rinse several times until you have clean seeds.
Drain the seed and spread on a paper towel to dry.
Store until spring.
If you want to breed your own new variety:
These seeds will be the parents of the second breeding cycle. Repeat the process for several years, discarding plants with poor flavour or low disease resistance. Just save seed from the very best plants each year. You will be surprised how quickly resistance to viruses like blight develop.
To grow from seed:
TPS (true potato seed) is usually sown in seedbeds three or four weeks prior to the potato planting season. The plants in the beds produce small tubers up to 1" (25mm), sometimes called tuberlets, which you dig up & replant individually as you would conventional seed tubers. If you don't dig them up & replant the tuberlets individually you will get loads of very small potatoes if you do replant then you get full size potatoes I have no idea why it's just the way they grow.