Potatoes - how is your crop?

[Monika]

We spent much of the day lifting most of our potatoes, having cut the blighted foliage off a few days ago, washing and drying them. But we were pleasantly surprised that the crop seems fine for Kestrel and Anya and enormous for Lady Balfour! Some tubers showed signs of blight and a few of Anya were already squashy with it, so we'll just have to hope that they will stay ok in storage. We have certainly thrown out any "iffy" ones, washed the good ones well, dried them in today's sunshine and light breeze and will be keeping a close eye on them in the months to come.
The only potatoes still to be harvested are Sarpo Mira and their foliage shows no sign of blight.
I would be interested in other people's experience of their crop in this year's blight.

[Chantal]

Hi Monika

I had a pretty reasonable crop of potatoes considering there was no foliage left. However, two weeks on and I'm finding blighted spuds in the sack so I'm having to go through the lot. I'm selling them to the staff at work rather than lose them before I can use them all.

[hilary]

Hi Monika,
I have pretty much the same to report as you. The Kestrel though blighted seem to be OK and no blight on the actual spuds so far and not too much slug damage. THe Lady Balfour are huge but full of slug damage and wire worm ( but I suspect the latter is due to us extending the bed)but alredy the tubers are showing signs of blight and rotting. SO far the Sarpo Mira are OK - I did cut down the foliage on one row before we went away on holiday as some of the foliage was showing early signs of blight (or so I thought) and the remaining foliage seems OK if a bit brown and spotted. THe Bonnie which came free with our T&M order just got blight and wire worm and I had to bin about half .
Outdoor tomatoes succumbed and we have had the worst infestation of white fly ever in the greenhouse even on the tagetes!!
Just going up to the allotment now to inspect for any more damage and hopefully spot some butternuts in the making!!
Bye
Hilary

[Colin_M]

We grew two types this year:

???? which produced a salad type red-skinned new potato. These grew with no problems and tasted excellent either as new spuds in salad, or as traditional boiled. When I find the name, I will buy them again!

Cara - these did show some signs of brown on the leaves, but not the stems, so I don't think they actually had blight. I harvested them at the end of July when flowers were virtually over & they had the little green fruits on them. About one potato in every other plant was a big "baking size", the rest were average. Despite using slug pellets in the soil beneath the plants & when earthing up, many of the spuds were affected by slug damage, though very few were unusable.

In summary, I think we were lucky to escape any blight problems (though many on our allotment had badly blighted spuds & I lost all my outdoor tomatoes).

Colin

[alan refail]

I have started threads on blight “resistance” (?) in potatoes and tomatoes on the “Technical Data” Forum.

viewtopic.php?t=4292 - potatoes

viewtopic.php?t=4293 - tomatoes

Please let’s hear of your (good) experiences there, in the hope that we all learn something for next year.

Alan

[hilary]

Hi Alan,
A good idea and will certainly contribute - may need a reminder later on in the year though!
Hilary

[Mike Vogel]

Maybe I've been lucky, but I don't seem to have been affected at all. The Maris Piper which I sowed in March have nearly all been dug and the spuds are in good nick. The foliage on those remaining has now become ragged but not quite brown. The Sarpo Miras are looking strong still. The Pink Fir Apple foliage has died back on almost all the plants, but the potatoes in the ground look fine.

I have composted healthy foliage, but all brown stuff has been put in a bodge-up incinerator for burning with weeds etc. No spuds will be grown in that area for several years.

Bedford is notoriously one of the driest parts of the country, but we've certainly had our share of wet weather this year, and I would have expected to be affected by blight, as on a number of my tomatoes. But even those are fruiting healthily.

Now I'll go look at alan's websites.

mike

[mandylew]

I have had my best ever crop! both the sarpo types, no blight and no slugs either which is my usual problem. Harlequin good at the top of the row, not so good (yield ) at the bottom of the row(not sure what that was all about, but again no blight or slugs. The other one i grew was the 5 free tubers of yukon gold from t&m but i actually got 6 as one was so big i cut it in half, again super yield and no diseasee, so far i have dug up half the row. we had some of these for tea this evening, they were described as 'exploding spuds' in an earlier thread so i was a bit dubious about roasting them but only one had done it and I was really pleased with the flavour althouygh there is something definately a bit different about them. Is blight airborne from other potato crops, i'm at an end corner of our allotments next to the car park and have definately fared better than other plots. I wondered if i had just been sheltered from it?