potato flowers?

[greenfingers007]

Good Morning Forumers.

Now this is a quickie? I have some massive potato plants standing nearly 3 ft tall, and I seem to only have one flower per plant is this normal? advice most welcome.

[lumpyjumper]

I too have enormous green growth on my potato plants but only one flower per plant. I'm growing Pentland Javelin and up until a few days ago thought they weren't going to flower at all.

I'm giving them lots of water at the moment as I'm sure I read somewhere that you need to water well when the flowers come to encourage growth of the tubers?

[Flummery]

Potatoes vary so much as to when, how much, and even if at all, they flower. Some people like to nip out the flowers to prevent seed setting and reserve all the plant's strength for the tubers. I'm a bit 'live and let live' about it! I certainly don't work out when to harvest according to flowering. Go by the length of time they've been growing (and make allowances for what the weather's been like.) I have about 5 types of first and second early spud in at the moment. Some have no flowers, some have flowers on a few of the plants. I'm looking out for one setting the seed 'berry' this year so I can sow some. As far as I know, this will give rise to totally new varieties. They might be grim but they might be gorgeous. I really need another allotment!

Watering - you need to do this in the last few weeks before you expect to harvest - calculate from the length of time they've been in. - About 12/13 weeks for first earlies, 14/15 for second and 18 or more for maincrop seems to be average.

[Two_Sheds]

As Flum says, some varieties flower and some do not. Early potatoes are ready for harvest when the foliage first starts to die and turn yellow ~ after about 13 weeks in the ground.

[lapousse]

I am growing 'cherie' potatoes, and it just occurred to me that they haven't flowered at all, and no sign of any buds. However the tubers are more than ready. I have trawled the web, but can't find a site that says whether or not they should have flowered. Anyway, they taste good, so what the heck!