[iwantanallotment]

...but need to ask it!

How can volunteer potatoes spring up where no potatoes have ever been grown before?

I have some in my onion & garlic beds, where potatoes grew last year. That's understandable; but also there are some among my runners, where potatoes have never been grown? Flowering, too!

I've put no vegetable peelings down or homemade compost, only horse manure/chicken pellets/blood, fish & bone.
There was a bag of potatoes growing 10ft away last year which developed pods - could that be it?
BUT - if these pods are hives of seed, how long for these seeds to develop to maturity and reveal a productive plant? A simple bluebell takes 5 years from seed to form a bulb!

I've been racking my brain to no avail, and would really appreciate any thoughts 

[Yorkie]

How long have you had your allotment?  Volunteer spuds can appear a surprisingly long time after the original crop...

I don't know, but I'd be surprised if the seed pods were producing spuds within a season?

[SG6]

Any chance that when digging the ground over a forkfull of soil from an area that had potatoes in it was thrown on to the area that didn't have?

If so then a small residual potato could have been transported and is now growing.

The other thing is that when harvesting some people dig up a potato plant, dig out the large potatoes then shake off he soil then harvest any potatoes still on the plants root structure. If anyone has done this then a small potato could have been shaken off and fallen else where.

Last year my old potato plants were the added to the compost. If you did/do the same do you have to carry the old plants over any ground. If so a small potato could have fallen.

There's 3 options. Makes you wonder there aren't potatoes everywhere.

[savbo]

and even a spud eye from the kitchen compost can keep growing if conditions are right...