Avoid duplicate columns while merging with pandas - python-3.x

Question

I have dozens of dataframes I would like to merge with a "reference" dataframe. I want to merge the columns when they exist in both dataframes, or conversely, create a new one when they don't already exist. I have the feeling that this is closely related to this topic but I cannot figure out out to make it work in my case.
Also, note that the key used for merging never contains duplicates.
# Reference dataframe
df = pd.DataFrame({'date_time':['2018-06-01 00:00:00','2018-06-01 00:30:00','2018-06-01 01:00:00','2018-06-01 01:30:00']})
# Dataframes to merge to reference dataframe
df1 = pd.DataFrame({'date_time':['2018-06-01 00:30:00','2018-06-01 01:00:00'],
'potato':[13,21]})
df2 = pd.DataFrame({'date_time':['2018-06-01 01:30:00','2018-06-01 02:00:00','2018-06-01 02:30:00'],
'carrot':[14,8,32]})
df3 = pd.DataFrame({'date_time':['2018-06-01 01:30:00','2018-06-01 02:00:00'],
'potato':[27,31]})
df = df.merge(df1, how='left', on='date_time')
df = df.merge(df2, how='left', on='date_time')
df = df.merge(df3, how='left', on='date_time')
The result is :
date_time potato_x carrot potato_y
0 2018-06-01 00:00:00 NaN NaN NaN
1 2018-06-01 00:30:00 13.0 NaN NaN
2 2018-06-01 01:00:00 21.0 NaN NaN
3 2018-06-01 01:30:00 NaN 14.0 27.0
While I would like :
date_time potato carrot
0 2018-06-01 00:00:00 NaN NaN
1 2018-06-01 00:30:00 13.0 NaN
2 2018-06-01 01:00:00 21.0 NaN
3 2018-06-01 01:30:00 27.0 14.0
Edit (following #sammywemmy's answer):
I have no idea what will be the dataframe columns name before importing them (in a loop). Usually, the dataframes that are merged with my reference dataframe contain about 100 columns, from which 90%-95% are common with the other dataframes.

Answer 1

I would pd.concat similar structured dataframes then merge the others like this:
df.merge(pd.concat([df1, df3]), on='date_time', how='left')\
.merge(df2, on='date_time', how='left')
Output:
date_time potato carrot
0 2018-06-01 00:00:00 NaN NaN
1 2018-06-01 00:30:00 13.0 NaN
2 2018-06-01 01:00:00 21.0 NaN
3 2018-06-01 01:30:00 27.0 14.0
Per comments below:
df = pd.DataFrame({'date_time':['2018-06-01 00:00:00','2018-06-01 00:30:00','2018-06-01 01:00:00','2018-06-01 01:30:00']})
# Dataframes to merge to reference dataframe
df1 = pd.DataFrame({'date_time':['2018-06-01 00:30:00','2018-06-01 01:00:00'],
'potato':[13,21]})
df2 = pd.DataFrame({'date_time':['2018-06-01 01:30:00','2018-06-01 02:00:00','2018-06-01 02:30:00'],
'carrot':[14,8,32]})
df3 = pd.DataFrame({'date_time':['2018-06-01 01:30:00', '2018-06-01 02:00:00'],'potato':[27,31], 'zucchini':[11,1]})
df.merge(pd.concat([df1, df3]), on='date_time', how='left').merge(df2, on='date_time', how='left')
Output:
date_time potato zucchini carrot
0 2018-06-01 00:00:00 NaN NaN NaN
1 2018-06-01 00:30:00 13.0 NaN NaN
2 2018-06-01 01:00:00 21.0 NaN NaN
3 2018-06-01 01:30:00 27.0 11.0 14.0

Answer 2

Continuing from your code, use the filter method to pull out potato related columns, sum them along the columns axis, and remove columns that contain potato_...
df['potato'] = df.filter(like='potato').fillna(0).sum(axis=1)
exclude_columns = df.columns.str.contains('potato_[a-z]')
df = df.loc[:,~exclude_columns]
date_time carrot potato
0 2018-06-01 00:00:00 NaN 0.0
1 2018-06-01 00:30:00 NaN 13.0
2 2018-06-01 01:00:00 NaN 21.0
3 2018-06-01 01:30:00 14.0 27.0