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Old 05-10-2007, 07:59 PM posted to sci.bio.botany
Ferd Farkel Ferd Farkel is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Sep 2007
Posts: 34
Default potato plants do well in Spring and Fall but not in summer

On Oct 3, 1:34 pm, a_plutonium wrote:
Ferd Farkel wrote:
On Oct 2, 3:07 pm, jon wrote:
On Sep 30, 4:11 pm, a_plutonium wrote:


Do potato plants have a summer time dormancy in their genetics, for I
notice they
do well only in Spring and Fall.


Photoperiodism? Preference for cooler weather?


Archimedes Plutoniumwww.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies


Are you observing the above ground growth as "doing well"? Maybe
during the summer months most of the photosynthesized food is going
into producing below ground biomass (making potatoes).


That would carry the assumption that a plant with few leaves is
growing prolifically
below ground. It makes more commonsense that the below ground growth
occurrs
with lush above ground leaf structure.

IIRC, potatoes are ready for harvest as soon as the plant
wilts, in early summer.


Perhaps what is going on is that potatoes have two harvests per one
single year, where
they produce potatoes and then dormant and then when Autumn comes
around, that the
newly produced potatoes have their own spurt of new growth.


This makes sense.

Potatoes are not roots, but tubers, offshoots of vegetative
stems, not roots. This is why they're buried in deep trenches
and hilled as they grow.

Something has to explain why every year my potatoes are lush in
Spring, then go almost
leafless during summer even when I water them and then spring back
into lush foliage
by Autumn.

Archimedes Plutoniumwww.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies