Potatoes & Berries

Potato Fruits (True Potato Seed) 

The past few weeks have been quite interesting in my garden.
First in the picture above you'll notice some fruit that look like cherry tomatoes, but really they are potato fruit/true potato seeds. In all my years of gardening this is the first time a potato plant has ever done this for me. I've long heard of this mythical fruit but never experienced it first hand.
Yes, you are hearing tones of giddiness over potato fruits.
Yeah- I probably need to get out more...

Potato Fruit of Yukon Gold Potatoes

I've picked a couple of the softer feeling ones and they are hanging out on the windowsill inside. I've heard various methods of extracting the seeds but I'm thinking about doing what I do to get my tomato seeds. Smash/wait/strain/dry/store. This is my first time planting Yukon Gold potatoes which are apparently known to frequently produce these fruits.


Onto the great berry research of 2012.
Can you tell the difference between a blackberry, tayberry, loganberry, olallieberry and a marionberry?
It can be quite confusing.
I have raspberries, blackberries and marionberries in my garden. (In my garden loosely applies to the blackberry because in my parts these fruit bearing vines are spawns of satan that invade everything! It's a weed!)

Marionberries

But after some discussion with a friend (while we picked blueberries on a local farm) she mentioned that she recently went tayberry picking. I mentioned that I preferred loganberries (duh, I'm from Whidbey Island) over tayberries. Her son then asked what those berries were and my friend responded "They're both a blackberry/raspberry cross."
Which they are and apparently they are not alone.

Berry Pedigrees (Graph credit to knewance.com)

Like children each hybrid takes one a trait from the parent. Loganberries tend to be more of a deep red like a raspberry but on the tart side like a blackberry. Tayberries are larger and a bit sweeter than the loganberries. Its a crazy matrix of qualities and characteristics. I spent a good hour or so just reading about them all. How their brambles & vines trail and grow. When they typically ripen in the year and of course their tastes. Personally I jam all of my berries so I guess I am mostly indifferent on preference. I'm definitely no berry connoisseur. How about you?  Did you even realize there were so many choices here? It's kinda fascinating. 

:) Thea