Fruit growing on my potatoes?

Question

We've grown potatoes for a number of years but this is the first year I've noticed we have strange 'fruit' growing instead of flowers on one of the potato bushes. They look like small un-ripe tomatoes and are very dark green and hard. All the other potatoes bushes are fine and have the normal flowers growing on them (and thankfully no blight). We've looked it up in our vegetable growing books but can't find anything about it. Does anyone know what the 'fruit' is and will the potatoes still be ok?

Answer 1

Funny you haven't seen them before. They are absolutely normal and are the fruit of a potato that follows the flowers. They look like tomatoes because potatoes and tomatoes come from the same plant family as deadly nightshade. Whatever you do ,do not eat or cook these fruits. They contain the same poison as deadly nightshade. I have seen these many times on potatoes, but they may be more common on some types or variety. Are the ones you are growing all the same variety? The potatoes we eat are not fruit,they are root tubers , and they will not be affected in any way by the love apples I think they are called on the plant.

Answer 2

All potatoes make flowers and some get pollinated and make seed Balls. These are very poisonous so do not eat them.

The seed balls are how potato breeders come up with new varieties.

Break one open and there will be seeds inside. You can plant the seeds and get plants that will make potaoes but the taters will be different than the parent plant. Some will not be good for eating and other will be delicious and all will be unique new potatoe varieties. This is how we got Yukon Gold Potatoes, for example.

The seed balls will not harm your potato harvest one bit

Answer 3

You have run into a problem. There are two kinds of potato bushes. One is the type of potato one eats and then thre is a flowering decorative bush native to Argentina. The one from Argentina is suppose to produce those kinds of fruits. http://www.backyardgardener.com/plantname/pda_0740.html