Our near-constant rain seems to have finally stopped, so I’ve been having to go out and water the garden every day this week. Lost most of the squash and zucchini plants to squash borers. Regular peppers and habanero peppers are starting to make fruit, but the dracula peppers still haven’t made up their minds. Had to kill a very LARGE green caterpillar that was eating one of my finally-decided-to-grow-like-crazy tomatoes (above) – I had to use a shovel, that ravenous monster was six inches long and bigger around than my thumb!
And then, I spotted this:
At first, I thought it was a tomato. Even though it was growing on a potato plant. Maybe it had been a hybrid potato, some kind of genetically-engineered creation that no one was ever supposed to re-plant for seed? Because it was growing right on the plant, and that plant is very obviously growing out of a potato. So I came back in the house and looked it up…and it turns out that our long, cool summer had caused a somewhat rare phenomenon to occur: It had allowed my potato plants to bear fruit! They can do that, apparently, but knowledgeable growers don’t encourage them to because – get this – the seeds won’t necessarily give you the same potato you planted. Planting potatoes to grow more potatoes is like cloning, you get the exact same thing out of the ground that you planted in it, but planting potato fruit seeds gets you Mystery Potatoes. Needless to say, I’m saving every single one of these little fruits, just to see what they’ll make for me next year.
WORD OF WARNING: Potatoes are nightshades – yes, as in beautiful witchy Deadly Nightshade, it’s all the same plant family. Potato plants and their cute little tomato-looking fruit are poisonous as hell, just like the leafy parts of regular tomato plants are. So if you’re playing around with experimental gardening (and an experienced online or in-person gardener isn’t handy to guide you), follow this simple safety rule: If you can’t buy it in a grocery store, you shouldn’t eat it.