Christmas Spuds.....dead?

sussexbaker

I planted three containers with seed potatoes hoping to have some lovely home grown spuds for Christmas. As my tomatoes have continued to be rather prolific and as the weather hasn't been too bad I left them outside, possibly in a bit too much of an exposed site. So while they initially shot up some nice looking haulms they all appear to have died back now. Are they beyond hope now?

Photo here : http://wp.me/a36sT8-1f

Farway

Is that blight? Seems very black haulms.

Given the situation I would remove haulm and just leave them until Christmas and hope for the best

sussexbaker

I was told by my mother and uncle that it was the cold winds that had done that. I wondered about blight. I assume with the haulms dead this early that there's very little hope of there being decent spuds below? Is it too late to put more in?

ALIBOBSY

Looks more like frost damage or lack of water to me. May be worth sticking under cover and see if anything resprouts.

My understanding of blight is it requires higher temps and humidity than we get this time of year.

Ali x

debralee_2

I tried to grow Christmas potatoes as well this year and they look the same as yours, dead! I am growing mine in stacks of tyres which was really successful for my earlier potatoes.

Ectophile

My late spuds were looking very brown in the last few days, and I cut them down today to gather what potatoes I could before they died and rotted. It was a pretty poor harvest, compared with what I was hoping for.

Personally, I wouldn't leave them any longer, in case the stems rot down to the roots. If you harvest them quickly, you may still have some good potatoes underground.

A._Badger

I've given up with 'second cropping' spuds. It was a nice idea but didn't seem to account for British weather!

sussexbaker

I think the mistake I made was not putting them in my greenhouse from the start. They shot up like rockets to start with but I stupidly had them in quite an exposed part of my garden. I'll probably give them another go next year building on the lesson of this year.