These volunteers are clones of the plants you planted last year, not random seedlings. No, they are not poisonous. They are just 'seed potatoes' that were stored in the garden rather than in a root cellar.
The only problem with volunteer potatoes is that they might be a reservoir for diseases -- PLANT diseases, like virus or blight. That's the reason that there might be any sort of taint attached to them.
okay i know this is a dumb question but are volunteer potatoes poisonous? my mother is driving me around the bend on this issue:S. we have a few red potato that came through from last years crop so we hilled them up. my mother said they were poisonous if they came up from last years potatoes and darn well not to even think of eating them. now to my way of thinking i dont see it as she does i think volunteer potatoes should be just as good as any other potatoes. anyone got thoughts on this :S. cyaaaaa, sockiescat:).-
No. There is no reason for them to different from any other potato.
David
thanks so much for the quck replies. i really appreciate it :). thanks again. sockiescat:).
no they are no problem at all, we always end up with volunteers and ofte they give us better crops, always a chance of a potato disease but it hasn't happened yet.
certa snipped With peace and brightest of blessings,
len & bev
-- "Be Content With What You Have And May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In A World That You May Not Understand."
People get the damnedest ideas. I wonder where in the world this one came from...
We harvest a few volunteer potatoes every year and have yet to die ...unless have died and this is the afterlife. ...In which case I want to talk to the boss, 'cause it ain't like the travel brochures.
Maybe she's misremembering the potato tuber grown in light conditions, turns green and gets toxic thing.
Perhaps there are more kinds of "other potato" than you are aware of. Some varieties of potatoes are poisonous due to naturally high alkaloid levels in the tubers, even without being exposed to light. In particular, one reason that native (south) Americans devised the freeze drying process to make chuno was that native potatoes had high levels of alkaloids and needed that processing to make them safe to eat, just like cassava has to be processed to be made safe. Nowadays they have selected potatoes for low alkaloid levels, and making chuno is done for preservation and because they (strangely) like the taste.
So if you grew potatoes from seeds, ones that set in the fruits (I don't know how easy that is to achieve) rather than "seed" tubers, one might be concerned they would not breed true but revert to a wild type, and have high alkaloids. After all people don't propagate from seed, which is usually cheapest, so probably there is a good reason why they don't. But in general, I have not heard of volunteer germination of potato (true) seeds taking place.
But since it seems these are volunteers from forgotten underground tubers, not fallen seed, then they are vegetatively reproduced, and the same as the
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