Friday, August 10, 2007

Tomatoes on my Potatoes

I thought I was imagining things the other day, and then remembered that tomatoes and potatoes are both of the Solanaceae family. My potatoes had little berries that looked like tomatoes!

They are inedible, in fact somewhat poisonous. I've been told the berry production is unusual, but about 6 of our plants seem to have fruit. I think I'll remove them so that the plants concentrate on the tubers rather than trying to produce a new generation.

Although we grew potatoes as a child I never remember the flowers setting and producing fruit.

Somewhat more worryingly I thought we may have blight, but having looked at the plants it looks like early blight, which isn't too damaging, rather than late blight. Early blight is also supposedly unusual, so we obviously have odd potatoes. The difference is explained here but one of the main differences seems to be early blight being shaped on the leaves by the position of the veins.

I cut the leaves with signs of it off and burnt them, just in case, and will keep a close eye on them to see of anything further develops. I also signed up for the blight forecast here from the British Potato Council, this uses temperature and weather forecasting, and local sightings of blight in your area to alert you to the risk.

All our tomatoes are unaffected, both indoor and outdoor ones.

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