Okay, I still need to catch up on my garden analysis drafts, but I had to do an extra gardening post!
We had the one purple potato from last year that showed up and grew quite large. I left it be, and for the first time, I had a potato that produced “fruit”.
I collected these after the plant was finally killed off by frost.
We’re having to rearrange our living room (the cat free zone) so we can do our Christmas celebrations in there. I needed to move out the variety of seeds and seed pods, plus these potato berries, there were on a screen to dry. These berries didn’t really dry, though the most frost damaged ones did start to get wrinkled and a few had to be tossed when they started to mold.
Today, I decided to see what they looked like inside.
They actually do have similarities to tomatoes! Really small, round, hard tomatoes. 😄 I was able to squeeze seeds out of quite a few of them. I didn’t collect seeds from all of them, as they have so many, it wasn’t long before my little plate was covered.
I have no idea if these had enough time to mature into viable seeds. From what I’ve read, each seed is genetically different from the parent plant. Since these came from All Blue purple potatoes, I would expect them to still be purple potatoes, but who knows? I’d have to try growing some! I’ve got the collected seeds drying on the plate for now. The rest went into the compost bucket. I suppose it’s possible some of those might germinate in the spring.
It should be interesting to find a quiet corner of the garden somewhere, and give some of these a try!
Well, this morning sure didn’t turn out as expected, but I’ll write about that in another post. For now, here are how things are going in the garden.
I picked a lot of beans yesterday, so there weren’t many that needed picking today. I found three Gold Ball turnips that looked ready to harvest – one of them has even started splitting! I also harvested the big G-Star patty pan. My daughters had spotted it when they were out earlier in the morning, were really excited to see how big it had gotten and were wondering what plans I had for it. I have no interest in letting it get big enough to go to seed, as everything in the squash patch will likely be cross pollinated. I could have let it go larger, but as long as its there, the plant isn’t producing more squash. So I’ve picked it, and will let my daughters decide what to do with it! 😄
I posted more photos on Instagram, from last night and this morning.
While checking the Indigo Blue tomatoes last night, one of them fell off in my hand! So I guess it’s ripe. 😄 It was also very cool to see that radishes are already germinating!
In the squash patch, there aren’t a lot of squash forming, but some of the ones that are, are getting big fast. Like the North Georgia Candy Roaster. The squash plants in the compost pile, however, are really amazing. The mystery squash – there are two of them so far – bear no similarity to any squash we’ve grown before. Whatever cross pollinating happened, I can’t even guess which they might be. We had so few squash winter squash last year, and even fewer that would have had viable seeds that ended up in the compost pile. As for the three biggest and roundest squash, they are getting patterns on them, and I can now tell that they are a hulless seed pumpkin.
A surprise this morning was with that volunteer All Blue potato. The resent storms had knocked it over, but it’s still blooming and looking very strong and healthy. The other potato volunteers don’t seem to be growing, but this one is doing very well. It is also growing “berries”! Potatoes do go to seed, but this is the first time I’ve had one do it. I am absolutely going to let this plant go through its entire life cycle and harvest the seeds. With potatoes, if you plant the tubers, you get the exact same potato. They’re basically clones of the original seed potato. With seeds, however, you will get new varieties. I have heard of a single potato variety that has seeds that grow true to the original. Otherwise, they are like apples, and every seed will grow a new variety.
Someone in one of our local gardening groups posted pictures of their potato plant doing the same thing. From the conversation there, I read that when the seeds get planted, it results in only one potato, but if you plant that one potato, it will produce more. I have no idea of it’s true, but I’m willing to experiment!
The last photo is of our largest Crespo squash. It’s no longer a smooth, perfectly round ball. The mature pumpkin is supposed to have a warty texture, and it should be interesting to see how that develops over time. Still hoping to get a long enough growing season for them to fully mature! I know we started them indoors really enough but these plants are really spindly compared to the first year we tried growing them.
Some things still seem to be touch and go, but overall, I’m happy with how the garden is doing this year.
The Re-Farmer 