Given up on potatoes.

[Ricard with an H]

So encouraging, thank you.

Do spuds that are grown in pollytunnels get blight ? Do any of you spud-growers use the "Blight" website for a warning of blight periods or is it mostly during summer periods with particularly high humidity regardless of what are known as "Smith periods". We live on an island and humidity is nearly always high where I live though that doesn't deter local potato growers.

[Westi]

Hi Richard

Just sign up to blight watch, it's free and they e-mail you when a full smith period is in your area, which is temperature & humidity. Then your choice to spray or risk it.

I got early blight & the warning came later so that was bad luck, but had to harvest or cut the tops off all my 1st & 2nd earlies as pretty bad and lost all my tomatoes. I had touches on the main crop spuds as well so used the copper mixture in a watering can & saved them. They did have a strange green tint to the plants until a couple of showers washed it off. I checked my box and it was 6 sachets (each the right amount for a watering can) for £3.45 but that was from the lottie shop. This season I used 3 sachets in total as had to have another go, but had taken up a row. Managed to limp through the season and got far sized spuds - just got to sort the slug damage now!

Westi

[WestHamRon]

I have read on another site about drilling holes a foot deep, dropping in a potato in October/November, covering and wait until next spring.
Apparently the warmth from the soil keeps the Potato alive during the winter months and it grows as normal in Spring.
Possibly worth a try?

[PLUMPUDDING]

I've been planting my potatoes from seed potatoes selected from my own crop for several years now in November. I've posted about this before so sorry for repeating it. I dig a spade deep trench, put compost, a sprinkle of fertiliser, mix it in a bit, sprinkle slug pellets then lay the potatoes along the row. Fill the trench ridge it up so the potatoes are about a foot deep, and it helps shed water in wet winters. In very cold winters I put a layer of straw over them. They come up a bit later than ones chitted indoors that you plant in March.

You plant them when there aren't a lot of other gardening jobs to do, and they stay dormant until suitable weather conditions next year instead of starting to sprout in their bags too early.

I do find that the potatoes lose their vigour if you've been saving seed from the same ones for several years, so I buy new ones to sow in spring and start again saving from those.

[Ricard with an H]

I love to hear about inventive practice, even if it doesn't work it shows thinking around a problem and finding different ways rather than sticking with the safe practice you learn from others. In some cases people will say "You can't do that" or something along those lines.

The lady in my life loves potatoes, anything made with potato is a meal for her. If and when she stops traveling and living away for her work I will have more reason to make more effort with potatoes. I don't eat a lot of potato and I'm a five days a week batchelor so growing food is more a hobby than anything else.

At the top of our paddock we have an area of deep fertile topsoil that would be perfect as an allotment rather than the raised beds areas I created as a solution to the poor stony soil closer to the barn we live in. I'm always pencilling-in plans to feed us when she stops working. If she stops working she would be the help I need to deal with the work that is getting too much for me.

Chickens and potatoes would be the first move, a polytunnels maybe.

[Westi]

Hi PP

I've read your previous post and am interested & might try this as an experiment! Nothing to loose as some of the volunteer spuds I dig up are untouched by slugs, whereas the proper crops are attacked!

Westi