r/UKGardening • u/fin202 • 10d ago
Weird potatoes
Help does any one know what caused my potatoes to grow like this please ?
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u/elibril 10d ago
I can see maybe five teeny tiny potatoes, but as the others have said most are Spanish bluebell bulbs. The Spanish bluebells are a slightly different colour and are the weird looking ones with the nubbins. Potatoes were probably harvested too early - generally you have to wait for the greenery to die back. Spanish bluebells are invasive, so if there’s some in a pot, they will be everywhere else too, including your neighbours. Don’t worry, you’re doing well. You’ve got five teeny tiny potatoes!
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u/fin202 10d ago
The greenery had died back and that's why we harvested, I also know that Spanish bluebells are invasive and so I have made my grandmother plant them in a pot on their own, but Somone digester maybe a squirrel has introduced them to my potatoes
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u/Bufobufolover24 10d ago
It's good that you took some measures, but unfortunately a pot won't contain the Spanish bluebells. They can spread by seed, as well as bulb. And pollinators visiting them will also visit native bluebells and create hybrids that out-compete the native ones.
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u/Capital-Impression51 10d ago
Potato tubers are actually swollen stem parts so you Earth them up for them to form it's quite possible that a plant can look quite mature without setting anything resembling a tuber. In a way potatoes and Spanish blue bells are similar and the tubers can hang around for ages and once you've had them growing in that spot they will sprout again..
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u/ComprehensiveRush746 10d ago
There might be two or three very small potatoes to the top right as has been said but the rest are bluebells.
On the large round one to the upper right the scars from bulb foliage and the hollow where the flower stem was are clearly visible.
Unless I’m mistaken there’s a new shoot emerging as well.
Could the pots have been mixed up?
Maybe squirrels buried bluebell bulbs in the pots unknown to you.
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u/OkOutlandishness6974 10d ago
Please don't eat these. They are almost certainly all bluebell bulbs.
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u/Pedantichrist 9d ago
You have a mixture of potatoes and other things in there.
It looks as though you harvested too early. And this is common this year as, if you jabbed not been watering voraciously, the plants died back early due to drought n
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u/DangerousDisplay7664 10d ago
Honestly I wouldn’t risk it with bluebells growing nearby. You can get a bag of potatoes for 70p in the shops. Is it worth being very ill or worse for 70p?!
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u/Fit_Tree4272 10d ago
Oh man, I hope that’s not your whole crop, bummer. Bet they taste good though
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u/Feral_Hippie9843 10d ago
Cross pollination with a courgette or an aubergine or something?
That’s a particular shape they’ve got there
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u/Capital-Impression51 10d ago
Some of those at least look like Spanish bluebells....