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Potato plants flower because they’re maturing and are ready to be pollinated and produce fruit full of seed. Basically, the potato plant wants to reproduce, and the potato flowers are one of the key parts of that quest.
I always get a little excited when I see my potato plants start to flower, as I know it’s almost time to start harvesting. It’s immensely satisfying to dig up and store the potato tubers I’ve been growing to feed my family through the year.
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But do you need potato flowers? What do they look like? Do they serve any other purpose? Can you eat the potato plant fruit? What is a flowering potato plant telling you? We’ll explore all of these questions and more below.
Why Do Potato Plants Produce Flowers?
Potatoes produce flowers to reproduce. When you harvest potatoes, you’re not digging up the fruit. The actual potatoes are tubers that you can eat or store or use to grow clones of the parent plants. But the fruits grow on the stems of the plants and develop after the flowers have grown, been pollinated, and died back.
Like most flora, potatoes have the desire to reproduce, and they can do it via their tubers, which, in the right climate, can survive below ground over winter and start to grow the following year. But they can also reproduce by seed. Growing potatoes from seed is more challenging, so most people just go for seed potatoes. You can even find out how to grow sprouted potatoes from the back of your cupboard here.
But potatoes like to double their chances, so they produce seed, too, which, once ripe and mature, is spread by the wind, birds, and wildlife further afield to take root and produce a new generation of cross-pollinated potato plants.
What Do Potato Flowers Look Like?
Potato flowers vary in color from white to pink to royal purple. They can also be red or blueish. Potato flowers look very similar to tomato flowers and pepper flowers. As they’re all members of the nightshade family, the similar-looking flowers make perfect sense.
Potato plants have flowers with five petals that can be round or pointed. These flowers can vary in color from white to pastel pink to dark purple. Protruding from the center is the stamen, which is bright yellow.
In many cases, the flowers drop off without being pollinated, but if the potato blossoms do get pollinated, you’ll see fruit form that looks like little green cherry tomatoes.
Can I Eat the Fruits From Potato Plant Flowers?
No, you shouldn’t eat potato fruit or flowers. Both are poisonous, as are the leaves and stems. I know the fruits look like tomatoes, but still, whatever you do, do not eat them! The potato plant, including the potato fruit and flowers, contains high levels of solanine, which is a glycoalkaloid poison that can make you very sick and, if you eat enough of it, can result in death. So remember, never eat any part of a potato plant apart from the tubers. And don’t eat those if they’re going green, as that means they’re producing solanine, too.
Solanine poisoning is a serious medical condition, according to Mount Sinai, and needs immediate medical attention. Mount Sinai claims symptoms to watch out for include:
- Stomach pain
- Vomiting
- Diarrhea
- Delirium
- Fever
- Hallucinations
- Headache
- Confusion
- Loss of sensation
- Low body temperature
- Shock
- Paralysis
- Slow respiration
- Vision problems
So you can see, it’s really important that you don’t eat potato fruits or flowers, or any part of the potato plant aside from healthy, not-green tubers.
When Do Potato Plants Flower?
Unlike most edible plants, potatoes flower toward the end of their growing season, when they’re reaching maturity. Aside from the plant letting you know it’s ready to produce seeds, the potato plant flower tells you that it’s almost harvest time.
Flowering potatoes let you know the growing season is well under way and that substantial tuber growth is underway. But don’t be too keen to dig them up. If the conditions are good, soil temperature is warm, there isn’t too much wet weather, and the sun is still plenty warm, let the tubers mature into larger potatoes for the biggest harvest.
How Long After Potato Plants Flower are the Potatoes Ready to Harvest?
You can dig potatoes right after the potato plant flowers, but only if you’re satisfied with small, thin-skinned potatoes. New potatoes are, admittedly a really, really nice treat, but you don’t get much return on investment.
But to increase potato yield, you should wait. That’s because maximum tuber formation occurs after mature potatoes flower. Your potato plant flowering is an indication of approaching readiness, but they’re not at their peak yet.
Consider this: New potatoes yield between 1 and 5 pounds of potatoes for every pound planted, while mature potatoes yield 15 to 20 pounds of potatoes for every pound planted.
So, in my opinion, if you can wait for the potato tubers to mature and fill out, you should, because you’ll get the biggest, best harvest that way. Sure, I usually plant a big enough potato crop, from seed potatoes, to dig up a plant or two early, while the growing potatoes are still deliciously tiny and thin-skinned. But, like many gardeners, I take off the usable tubers and replant so that the underground stems, or stolons, can continue growing for the rest of the season, so I don’t reduce my overall yield too much.
Before I dig my main crop potatoes, I wait for the potato plants to start to die back. This can happen from 2 to 6 weeks after the potatoes flower. They dry out, lose their color, drop potato fruits and leaves, and start to fall over. At this point, I dig up and cure the potatoes before putting the now dry potatoes into storage and digging in or composting the parent plant.
Can I Dig Potatoes Before They Flower?
Yes, you can dig potatoes before they flower, but you’ll only get a small harvest of new potatoes. The earlier you harvest, the fewer pounds of potatoes you’ll get. In general, if you harvest before flowering, you may get less than a one pound yield for every pound you planted.
Yes, new potatoes are lovely when they’re at the stage where the skin just rubs right off them, but the amount you’ll reduce yield by is just too much for me to consider it worthwhile digging up potatoes before they flower.
Should I Let Potato Plants Flower?
Yes, you can let your potato plants flower. There’s really no reason not to let your potatoes flower. Producing flowers is your potato plant letting you know that it’s nearly harvest time.
What If My Potato Plant Never Flowers?
Not every potato plant will produce a potato flower, as not all potato varieties flower at all, or some only flower in certain conditions. And that’s fine. Potato blossoms and fruits are pretty useless. Yes, you can grow potatoes from seed, but only if you want to create a new hybrid variety. Most people grow their potatoes from seed so they get a direct copy of the parent plant. You potatoes will still produce tubers even if it doesn’t flower.