Poison Potato Berries

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One of the fun aspects of gardening is that you never know what you don’t know about a vegetable until it shows up in your garden.

I’ve been gardening since I was a toddler. I’ve seen and planted several different varieties of potatoes in the half dozen different places I’ve lived over the course of my life time, not doing the math, but that’s a few dozen gardens. My husband also has a long history with gardening as well. This year, we learned something new that we never knew about or even thought about: poison-potato berries.
My husband was in the garden and called out to me, for me to come and see the tomato-looking growths on our potato vines.
I grabbed my camera and took off.
He showed me the tomato-looking growths. We discussed if we had gotten a cross-pollinated batch of potato sets of ‘tomato potato plants’.As soon as I got back in the house, I ran a search on them through a search-engine and I’m glad I did.
These are not a cross-pollination, what we have growing on our potato plants is a normal type of ‘poison-berry’ that naturally grows on potato plants, although rarely of any size. However, the bigger ones are usually on the Yukon Gold variety, which is what we planted this year.Fortunately, the poison-potato berries doesn’t effect the quality of the potato tubers growing in the ground, so we’re good-to-go on that.

Also in the photos, you can see the flea beetle damage on the plants. We’ve been fighting the tiny damaging buggers all season. I don’t know why they’re so hardy this year, unless it’s because it’s been such a hot dry gardening season so far.

Tah-dah and there you have it.
We 2 Old Gardeners learned something new this year.
Ain’t that a hoot?

Happy June 1st everyone!

for more info on the poison-potato berries:
https://hortnews.extension.iastate.edu/2013/08-9/potato.html

26 thoughts on “Poison Potato Berries”

    • ~EC runs in and gives Nadine a big hug~ ❤
      My goodness it's wonderful to hear from you again Nadine,
      I've missed you and reading your blogs. I hope you and your family are well.
      I was surprised to learn of the poison-potato berries too. It's been fun to learn new things about them. 😀
      WordPress has been acting buggy for me too. For instance, this is the second time I've tried replying to your comment. My first attempt disappeared into the proverbial ether. :/
      (I might have spelled ether wrong 😉 )

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  3. This long time gardener with a gardening husband had never seen this either, Thanks for sharing. This is very interesting to know.

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    • Thanks so much, Ginny,
      I’m happy to share. I was surprised by the poison-potato berries. As I understand it, they are poison for humans. I’m not sure if it’s a protection for the plant, but I suspect they might be. I haven’t researched it any further.
      It’s fun to learn and share new things. 😀

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    • True Pip
      I’m an old country gal and it’s second nature to be cautious. Thank goodness for the quick and easy information highway of the internet that made it possible to alert us of the real danger there. 🙂

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  7. I’d never heard of poison potato berries either, but then potatoes are not something I ever had in my garden. Always on the “maybe next year” list but never managed to get to it and of course now I’m just waiting till I have land to have a garden again. Thanks for sharing E.C., you certainly shared a new piece of information with a lot of us!

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    • Thanks so much CW
      I feel like my blog has reached a monotonous stage, so it’s nice to have something new to share that is also a beneficial piece of information too.
      I figure, someday, when you can, you’ll have a flourishing beautiful garden. I can only imagine the fruits and vegetables you’ll produce and the delicious recipes you’ll create with them. 😀

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    • Thanks so much Claire,
      I didn’t think I had anything else to learn about potatoes and then this surprise happened. I enjoy learning about the poison potato berries and fun sharing it. 🙂

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