My potatoes hve been flowering abundantly for over a month and have not started setting fruit. What could be the cause?
I know potatoes tend to not set fruit when temperature gets over 26C. At times temperatures have been above that. Most days, at least the last couple of weeks, have been below that.
Can’t say nothing for certain, but might be something to do with northern climate/daylenght. I have never seen them set fruit well. This year seems better than others, at least in terms of fruit size. I have collected couple handfulls of fruits and might get similar amount later. I have total of maybe 100 plants so not much. Also the fruits seem to fall prematurely, but just ripe enough to have viable seeds often enough to make it worth saving seeds. Incompatibility might be another and right pairs being futher away for ideal pollination. I do not have any knowledge how that actually works in potatoes so it’s just assumption based on results. Part of the reason might be that there has been selection against heavy fruit set, but I do also have varieties grown from more “original” potatoes so there might be other factor with them as they seem even worse at producing fruits. Might be the first year that I have any fruit at least some of those. Might be just that we need to select for better fruit set in more northern climate.
Potatoes are very finicky about making berries. Some years I have buckets of them and some almost none at all. It could be that they are not getting pollinated, it could be the variety as some produce almost no berries anyways or it could be the conditions (too wet too dry too hot not hot enough etc.)
“The lost art of potato breeding” by Rebsie Fairholm is a good resource.
Exactly as Ashley said above - one year plenty of berries, another year almost not at all, and this is from one line of potatoes bred from TPS. This year is extremely hot, so no fruits almost at all.