Hunting, fishing and gardening — anything outdoors — always have fascinated Milo Kellerman.
He can wait for hours for a chance at a nice buck, finds few things more relaxing that lounging in his boat on a lake while bait bounces along the bottom and annually raises vegetables for his and wife Janice’s table.
For Milo, 62, the outdoors and gardening have few surprises — until this spring when berries started to sprout from blossoms on three potato vines in barrels behind his home in north Iola.
He was baffled.
“I’d never seen anything like it,” he said.
Nor had several veteran gardeners he asked.
“John Richards at the (Elm Creek) community garden had no idea what they were,” Milo said.
He got quizzical looks from Floyd Scheer and Don Yancey, whose thumbs are just a green as Milo’s.
“No one had any idea,” he said.
Carla Nemecek, Extension Service agent, was uncertain about the unusual growth and sent Milo to the Internet.
Mystery solved.
According to Wikipedia, “… some varieties produce small green fruits that resemble green cherry tomatoes, each containing up to 300 true seeds. Potato fruit contains large amounts of the toxic alkaloid solanine and is therefore unsuitable for consumption.”
Milo also learned that he could chop up the berries, soak them in water and seeds would separate and sink to the bottom after a day or two, a process he may try.
He found no explanation why three of seven plants in his barrel garden at home produced the fruit.
“I got a couple of Yukon potatoes from Sharon Sigg (Lady Bud Greenhouse) and cut them up into seven pieces,” Milo said. “I planted three pieces each in two barrels and one in a third barrel.”
Fruit appeared on one plant in each of the first two barrels and on the single plant in the third barrel.
ALONG WITH the fruit oddity, Milo’s potato plants are getting along very well.
The vines held in place by tomato cages are nearly 4 feet tall, which prompted some friends to suggest that the plant wouldn’t bear potatoes, or if they did the potatoes would be small.
