My plants are struggling

top_drawer_2

hello,

I've noticed my plants are struggling, its rained and rained so much here that I havent been out in the yard for awhile. My potato plants seem to have chunks eaten out of the leaves, and some sort of sticky stuff on the leaves. I have in the past few weeks cut loads of leaves off (as advised on the internet) because they were showing spots of (what I thought was) blight.

My lettuces look desperate and again they seem to have been eaten.

Please help, I didnt expect to run out of stuff so soon.

Jen

Yorkie1

First question is whether you have drainage holes in your pots / trugs? If not, that needs to be done asap.

My hunch is that it's not blight, have a look at the rhs page - but I'm not sure what it actually is.
http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/Profile.aspx?pid=217

What sort of potatoes are they (first / second earlies, maincrop?), when were they planted or how many weeks have they been in? It could just be that they're nearing maturity. Have you had a rummage in the soil?

Is it soil or multipurpose compost? Did you add any fertiliser, they could just be hungry.

The lettuce could well have been eaten by birds, it's not too late to start some more off.

top_drawer_2

Yorkie1 wrote: »

First question is whether you have drainage holes in your pots / trugs? If not, that needs to be done asap.

My hunch is that it's not blight, have a look at the rhs page - but I'm not sure what it actually is.
http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/Profile.aspx?pid=217

What sort of potatoes are they (first / second earlies, maincrop?), when were they planted or how many weeks have they been in? It could just be that they're nearing maturity. Have you had a rummage in the soil?

Is it soil or multipurpose compost? Did you add any fertiliser, they could just be hungry.

The lettuce could well have been eaten by birds, it's not too late to start some more off.

Hello,

Yes I put drainage in them when I planted up. I've never grown potatoes before .... does that make them first? They are maturing quite nicely but I cant use them all at the moment.... wish I had thought to plant up at 2 week intervals. I used multipurpose compost from a market seller in town. I havent added fertiliser as I wanted them to be natural. I didnt think birds would be interested in my two pots of lettuce. There is some small, faxt moving black creepy crawly type things. I couldnt even catch one to see if it had distinguishing marks.

Thanks for any advice - Im really stuck.

Jenny

lizzyb1812

Hi

Potatoes take a long time to mature to big baking size potatoes. You can harvest them sooner when they are smaller and some varieties have been bred to be harvested early and small - these are "First" potatoes or "Early" potatoes. Then you get "Second Earlies" which spend a bit longer in the ground and finally "Maincrop" which stay in the ground longest and produce the biggest potatoes. That's the reason for the question about the type of potatoes.

Birds and insects will definitely have spotted your vegetables - it doesn't matter how few or how many you have, to them it's food and if it's not protected they'll have it.

If you are managing to get potatoes and lettuce from your plants - and you have - then you're a success :T
They look a bit over-watered and I wouldn't bother trimming away the potato foliage (never heard of that before) but otherwise just give them a bit of time - plants want to grow and will overcome all sorts of obstacles in their own way

HTH

Lizzyb
you'

lizzyb1812

Forgot to say:

Lettuce, radishes, etc you sow at intervals to keep a crop coming because you eat them when freshly harvested and they don't keep but potatoes you normally plant all at once because they will keep for ages if stored properly

Lizzyb

top_drawer_2

Thanks!!

Shall I dig them all up now and store them? How would I store them? cold and dark area or can I freeze them?

Jen

lizzyb1812

I'm digging mine up as I need them. I haven't got that many - just a few plants grown from left over supermarket spuds but producing enough for a couple of meals from each plant.

So no need to dig them all up - unless you want the space for something else - just dig them up when you want to cook them. The rest will just carry on getting bigger. You can keep doing this until autumn.

If you want to dig them all up and store them you'll need a cool/cold dark place.

Lizzyb

top_drawer_2

Its just that the potato plants are looking pretty bad; what with the leaves being eaten and that gluey stuff on the leaves then there is the driving ran we have had here.... I'm worried they will rot.

Jen

wssla00

is the gluey stuff silvery? If it is is could be slugs- I have taken about six hostage today! Blimmin things!

lizzyb1812

Like all vegetables potatoes are 90 something percent water so don't worry about the rain - I'm having to water my garden because of the lack of rain (East Anglia)

But it seems you'd like to dig them up. Hey - they are YOUR potatoes so do what you want with them. Just keep them somewhere cool/cold, dry and dark

lizzyb1812

top_drawer_2

Well today I have chucked away the lettuce pots as the soil was crawling with little black quick moving things and I didnt know if I could plant up in them again, there was nothing left of the lettuces. I also dug up all the Formost potatoes, I found quite a few had been eaten and then left the skin behind and some gloopy stuff - disgusting!! That means I have potatoes for tonights and tommorrows tea. I have put some ferteliser on the rest of the potatoes and hope they will show inprovement soon - I would really like to know what to do about the chucks of leaves missing, more and more of the leaves seem to have large bites taken out of them, others just holes in them like moths almost. I havent noticed any slugs but it has rained A LOT here .... I always thought they were above ground animals though!

Any advice is much appreciated.

Jen