Bill and I were outside a little while ago checking out the back forty (haha), and we came across these little things dangling from one of the potato plants.
We haven’t been growing potatoes for very long (last year was our first year), so we had no idea what these things might be.
They sort of look like tomatoes, but no…it’s a potato plant. I thought maybe they were potatoes that the plant decided to produce above ground for some mysterious potatoey reason.
As I said, we’re new at potato farming.
I took pictures of them (obviously) and then went inside to do a bit of internet research.
Turns out they’re actually a fruit. Potatoes don’t produce the fruit all the time, but for whatever reason, we got these four little things this year.
I guess it’s not surprising that they sort of resemble tomatoes, since tomatoes and potatoes are both members of the infamous nightshade family. And, as members of said family, these little fruits are toxic. I’ll go back outside in a bit and remove them, just in case we’ve got any little kids prowling around out there eating random produce.
I’ve read that they have hundreds of little seeds inside, but that if you plant them, you’re not guaranteed a good potato plant necessarily.
Maybe, just for kicks, I’ll dry some seeds and plant them in a pot, just to see what we get.
That’s it for the moment.
Back soon with a longer post about my first bit of summer canning.
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