Potatoes are versatile plants that are easy to grow and thrive in many climates and under different conditions. Potato plants are difficult to recognize from other plants like tomatoes and peppers because their leaves resemble each other. But what do potato plants look like? This article depicts what potato plants look like.
Potato plants are herbaceous plants that grow up to 40 inches tall. Potato plants have oval-shaped leaves with smooth edges. The leaves are light to dark green; each leaf is 20 cm to 30 cm long, depending on the variety, and consists of a terminal leaflet and two to four pairs of leaflets. Potato leaves occur alternately on the stem.
The plants have large, smooth leaves close to the base of the plant and smaller, textured leaves at the top. Also, leaves on the upper side have tiny short hairs on the surface, and the underside of the potato plant is usually less green and has short hairs, although they are difficult to see. It is easier to see veins and the midrib of the underside than on the top.
The plants during the flowering stage produce flowers depending on the type of potato planted. The flower has a colour range from white to blue, purple, and pink, and at the base, the flower may be streaked or tinged with pink or white, whatever the colour.
What Do Potato Plants Look Like When Ready to Harvest
Potato plants are ready to harvest when the flowers that appear on them dry off and the tops begin to shrink back down to the soil. Also, leaves start to turn yellow, stop growing, and die back.
Yellow plant foliage will turn brown, tops will wilt, leaves will begin to fall on the ground, and stems will be left lying on the soil.
Therefore, the leaves and stem browning indicate they are ready to be harvested.
What Do Potato Plants Look Like in the Ground
Below the ground, the stem of the potato is usually white to ivory in colour. The roots grow clustered at the bottom of the plant, but a few grow along its length.
Potato tubers form all along the buried stem, creating hills by piling more soil on the growing tops; as a result, more tubers form along the buried stem.
Potato tubers vary in size, shape, and color; their shapes range from round or oval to elongated oblong. They have different colors depending on the variety of potatoes grown. Some may be tan, red, purple, blue, yellow, brown, or gold on the outside, and white flesh is standard no matter what the exterior colour is, but some varieties are red, yellow, blue, or purple inside.
How Tall Do Potato Plants Grow
The potato plants can reach 60 to 100 cm tall when fully grown, depending on the soil conditions and the type of potato planted.
The potato stem is delicate, smooth, and thin when it emerges from the soil, and as plants grow, they become thicker and more textured and ribbed. These stems thicken and grow to form tubers close to the surface.
How Does a Potato Plant Reproduce
Potato plants reproduce asexually through the process of vegetative propagation. The potato tubers have nodes, from which new growth begins; sprouts appear as shoots, and root development proceeds downward. When placed in moist soil, air, or water, the tubers with nodes and internodes will rise to form a new plant, thus forming a potato plant.
Therefore, potato plants emerge from their tubers, which grow into new plants under suitable conditions that enhance growth.
