I noticed the potatoes started blooming today. The only thing I know about potatoes blooming is to keep them well-watered while they are blooming, because that’s when the tubers start forming. I’ll be keeping them well-watered, and hopefully there are tubers forming.

I was a little surprised when I saw the flowers. Potatoes don’t always get flowers, and I don’t think I’d ever seen a potato flower before. They may or may not form seed. If they do, I’ll be saving it for future potato experimentation. The only way to get a new type of potato is to grow one from seed, but they say you never really know what you are going to get. Even seeds within each multi-seed pod (which looks like a tomato) varies in its genetic makeup. Still, I might play with it a little in the future. Who knows, I might come up with something new or better! It could happen!

All I really care about though is that the potato plants are obviously mature enough and healthy enough to be flowering, so hopefully that means there will be potatoes. I don’t like growing things I can’t keep tabs on, and potatoes are a giant mystery until you start digging them up. It’d be nice if this year’s initial experiment with growing potatoes was at least nominally successful.

By the way, the peanut plants are not giving me much hope. Supposedly, peanuts start blooming and setting fruit 30-40 days after they emerge. Mine began popping up on April 1, which isn’t all that long ago, but they are tiny little pale green things. They just aren’t growing much at all. There isn’t anything at all robust about them, and I can’t imagine them flowering or setting fruit in the next two or three weeks. They seem stunted, and their pale green color concerns me. I believe I will thin them out a little in the hopes that more space and resources might get me some peanuts, but unless there’s a miracle, the peanut experiment doesn’t seem to be going well. Well, I tried. If nothing else, they will have enriched the soil in that bed in the way only legumes can do. Whatever is planted there next will be happier for the usable nitrogen. :)

But … we will be eating a pot of fresh green beans early next week! The beans are most certainly getting planted again and again and again! So easy!

Note: For anyone interested in further reading concerning potatoes, breeding potatoes, and/or potato seeds, here’s a great blog post and an informative web site on the subject. I’m interested in the subject, but I don’t know how much space in my life I want to devote to potatoes, and they do take up space.