Potato blight????

Biggles

~Chameleon~ wrote: »

One thing that's been puzzling me since the other day, and now I'm wondering if this is related, but when I dug up those couple of plants to try them I noticed the original seed potato had rotted and gone squishy. Is this normal?

Yes, that's normal.

As LindseyKim says, if only some leaves are affected, you can just cut those off to begin with; if it gets more of a hold, then cut off the haulm altogether.

Bear in mind that there are lots of things that may make leaves turn brown - we've had a long dry spell up till now, so I'd have thought lack of water was more likely than blight. And, in any event, if your pots have flowered, the haulm will start dying back soon, in which case you'll be cutting it all off anyway.

knightstyle

Green alternative to Bordeaux to prevent blight anyone?

RAS

~Chameleon~ wrote: »

I know I'm probably only delaying the inevitable, but on the caras it was only the lower leaves affected so far, and signs of lots of new growth appearing at the leaf nodes on the stem, so I've only removed the lower leaves so far and see what happens.

On the pink fir I've cut off the entire haulms but I shall wait for a warmer sunny day to actually dig up the spuds.

This is my experience, based on advice from the potato guru Alan Romans.

Have several potato fiends near my plot, they cover about 70-85% of the plot with tatties, mostly grown from seed they have self saved from plants that were blighted last year and then clamped on the plot.

Roman's comment on this practice was "Hell will mend them" - a good Fife phrase.

His advice which I now follow is to cut the foliage right back, remove, dry and burn it and leave the plants untouched for 3 weeks. The blight needs plant material to survive and it can take that long to die. Try to lift the potatoes on a dry day and to ripen them on sacks or plastic rather than the ground.

Whilst other plotters lost very high percentages of potatoes, most varieties were almost diseaee free on my plot. I remove and burn all diseased tats.

~Chameleon~ wrote: »

One thing that's been puzzling me since the other day, and now I'm wondering if this is related, but when I dug up those couple of plants to try them I noticed the original seed potato had rotted and gone squishy. Is this normal?

That is perfectly normal. The old tuber gradually rots and dies.

The other thing you can do is grow Sarpo varieites which are remarkably blight resistant. I left them uncut last year despite the blight and one (Axona?) was still green after the first frosts in November. No blight on the potatoes. Best option is to buy them direct from Romans at a Potato Day.

Larumbelle

knightstyle wrote: »

Green alternative to Bordeaux to prevent blight anyone?

Boil up a load of horsetail in a pan of rainwater (not tap water), it stinks, I do it on a camping stove outside. Dilute 1 part horsetail solution to 10 parts rainwater and spray potato/tomato/legume leaves with it every 3-4 days if it is 'blight weather', once per week if not. It is better to let the horsetail rot and collect the liquid, and dilute it 1/20, so if you want to do that it might be worth starting for next year.

Also someone I know swears by putting his pulled up horsetail in the waterbutt, never tried that though.

JWF

My spuds are now affected by blight. Looking on the Blightwatch/Fight against blight website, my area is one of the few with multiple cases

I've pulled off the affected leaves and I'll see how it goes, if it spreads much in the next few days I'll pull the lot up.

The good news is that my King Eddies don't seem to be affected so far, just my earlies.

Lotus-eater

Don't mess about with spuds. Cut off all the haulms now, it spreads so fast you can hardly believe it.

~Chameleon~

JWF wrote: »

I've pulled off the affected leaves and I'll see how it goes, if it spreads much in the next few days I'll pull the lot up.

Sorry to hear you got it too

Don't pull them up yet though, just cut off and destroy the haulms. You need to wait a minimum of 14 days to reduce the chance of the tubers becoming infected also.

Been a bit of a steep learning curve has all this as it's first time I've ever grown spuds

This pdf leaflet might be useful to read. It's aimed more at commercial growers but the information still applies to us smaller growers too

http://www.potato.org.uk/media_files/FAB_GAs/organic.pdf

gingerbeer

I have two compost bags of spuds growing one much larger than the other. The large bag was full of lovely foliage until the other weekend when we had the tail end of the hurricane and horrendous downpours. Since then the stems have started rotting and the foliage has started to look worse and worse dying off.
i have googled potato blight but this describes black marks on leaves etc but not rotting stems and the images do not look like mine.
Does anyone know what is wrong with them? I think it may be too late for them. will i still be able to reuse this compost in the garden?
Thanks in advance

kandyfloss

Hi GB the leaves of your spuds will have brown splodges on them if they are blighted and the stems will certainly start to rot and shrivel to nothing.

What I would do tomorrow is to empty the compost bags and see what kind of crop you have.Do you know if they were early,second early or late spuds? and do you know the variety you planted.That would give some idea as to what stage they should be at,at this time of the year.

If the spuds look pretty decent then they should be ok for eating b ut if they have started to go mushy and foul smelling then you can safely say that they are blighted and they and the compost should be thrown away along with the plant it's self.On no account spread any of the compost onto the garden if you intend growing either spuds or tomato's ext year because there will be blight spores thta will go down into the soil and will infect next years plants.

If the spuds have just died down naturally then you will be ok to spread the compost round the garden but make sure you burn or throw away the foliage part...

Good luck and do let us know how you get on with them

gingerbeer

I will check tomorrow what they are like. The variety is either Asda sprouters or Morrisons sprouters, therefore no idea when they should be ready but i'll have a good root. :eek: