Potato Fruit

Yep, it's a real thing. I took a look at my potato plants today and I found what looked like green cherry tomatoes dangling from the branches. It turns out that with the right weather -- it's been humid, rainy and on the cool side here -- potatoes bear fruit. I had noticed the pretty purple flowers but didn't think much of it.

Like the foliage, the fruit is toxic. But potatoes can be grown from the seeds. They won't breed true, however, which is good for people who want to create new potato varieties -- just plant a bunch and pick the one you like. For farmers however, it might be a fun adventure to try it and see what you get, but for next year's crop, you need to stick to planting the tubers. Tubers meant for planting are called seed potatoes which makes for confusion if you try searching on line.

Tomatoes and potatoes are in the same family, along with eggplant and peppers, called the solanacaea or nightshades. Over the centuries people have bred tomato, eggplant and peppers for the fruit, and potatoes for the tubers, so many potato varieties have lost the ability to reproduce sexually and make seed. It seems mine have not however.

Even more vegetables are contributed to the human diet by the Brassicaceae, which include everything from broccoli to cabbage to horseradish to collard greens. The so-called cole crops -- brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, kale, kohlrabi, mustard, broccoli, turnip and watercress -- are all considered by botanists to be a single species. By selective breeding farmers have transformed them into what appear to be radically different plants, of which we may eat the leaves, the root, the seeds, and even the flowers. So one thing to be clear about -- when you're gardening or farming, you aren't getting back to nature. You're creating an artificial environment and filling it with bizarre genetically modified organisms. And that's if you're practicing completely organic farming. Just something to think about.