Cyrus is a wealth of information. My comments are that mine often do not flower, and that it really does not seem to matter at all. Among your comments, the only one that seems a little off is your watering. Potatoes are usually better off with a little LESS than you think they need. So adequate watering is too much. Maybe? I have relatives near there, and I know that theirs have been growing since early March. I am so jealous. I did not get action until second week of April. Rip em out and do another crop! Potatoes are so much fun. Dig em up any ol time. I pulled some too early last year. The stalks were still green, but fading fast, by that time, the potatoes are about as big as they are going to get, anyway. I shed a tear for all those potatoes left unborn... for about two seconds.

Hi I mailed you the Genevieve Costoluto and other heirloom tomato seeds we discussed. The Sioux tomatoes I am growing are from this same group of seed packs. You are the first person I am sending Sioux tomato seeds and Indigo Blue Berries cherry tomato seeds. You should receive them on Monday. cottonwood/ragtime

they are seed potatoes... Then perhaps I misunderstood you original post? Are the green pods growing in the picture I linked above what you have? The green pods growing where there were some blooms are seed pods full of potato seeds. That isn't the same thing as seed potatoes. ;) Big difference. In the pods, if you leave them to dry, will be lots of little seeds that can be planted to grow plants that will eventually develop small "seed potatoes". Seed potatoes are bought at the farm center/store or ordered from seed catalogs and look like small potatoes with tiny sprouts on them. They get planted in the ground to grow potatoes. Make sense or only add to the confusion? Dave

Y'all, There is no direct link between tuber initiation in potato plants and flowering. Each of those two is a separate process that is not directly linked to the other. Normally, tuber initiation will occur from 5 to 7 weeks after the potato plants sprout. In many potato varieties, flowers appear after tuber initiation has already ended or as it is just ending, but the tubers will initiate even if the potato plant never flowers. Once initiation ends, that is followed by tuber enlargement which I think does tend to occur as flowering occurs but that's a coincidence too. In his book, THE VEGETABLE BOOK, Dr. Sam Cotner says this about the relationship between tuber initiation and flowering of the potato plant: "Contrary to popular belief, there is no correlation between flowering and tuber initiation or development. Cooler temperatures are conducive to both occurrences and during cooler periods, Texas-grown potato plants may flower profusely, but tubers will be formed regardless of whether or not flowering occurs." At the time he wrote the book, which has been my 'vegetable growing bible' for well over 20 years, Dr. Cotner was the head of horticulture at Texas A&M University and also had been an avid home gardener at that time for over 30 years. For me the biggest surprise in his statement is not that he says tuber initiation isn't linked to flowering but that he says flowering may or may not occur. I thought flowering always occurred, but after thinking about it for a while, I can remember times when either flowering didn't occur, or I didn't notice it occurred. For what it is worth, the new potatoes I harvested this week to cook with the first batch of green beans were from a Russet potato plant that had not yet flowered at all. (It has been several days, and it still hasn't flowered.) Since I harvested potatoes up to the size of hen eggs, this plant clearly has already had tuber initiation and some degree of tuber enlargement even though it hasn't flowered at all. It was Dr. Cotner's book, by the way, that taught me that a lot of what I thought I knew about growing veggies was not correct. I've always grown a lot of veggies dating back to my childhood, but it wasn't until I read his book and applied what he said to my own gardening efforts that I saw the yields on all my veggies greatly increase and felt like the space devoted to vegetable gardening really paid off. I looked at my own potato plants today and about 2/3s of the varieties have flowered already or are just beginning to flower. Oddly, the largest plants---the ones grown in the stock tank---haven't flowered at all even though those plants are 2 to 3 times as large as the in-ground potato plants. I have put a 12" thick layer of alfalfa hay on my in-ground potato bed this week in an effort to keep the ground cooler because unseasonably warm temperatures do have an adverse effect on tuber enlargement. It is ironic that my potato plants look as good as they've ever looked, or even better than they've ever looked in past years but the yield may be reduced because the weather got too hot too soon. Dawn