Have you ever had strange growing potatoes? I discovered these mutant looking potatoes when I dug up a patch of potatoes in my back garden this Fall. These were planted later this year and apparently didn’t get enough water.
I researched what the cause of these strange growing potatoes and found that they were stressed. Stressed potatoes don’t grow properly. The tubers stop growing and don’t spread out causing the potatoes to grow together such as these potatoes did.
Long periods of dry, hot weather without enough rain and lack of watering is mainly the cause. There are also some other reasons that you get can strange growing potatoes as shown in this gardening article. This summer was very hot and we didn’t get much rain so this stressed out my potatoes.
When you get mutant growing potatoes like this, your harvest will be much smaller as I can attest to. While this late planting of potatoes did produce some potatoes, my overall harvest was smaller than last year. I learned a valuable lesson and will share a useful tip, water more to prevent this!