Kitchen Garden Forum

With the unusually early and widespread incidence of blight this year, I thought it might be useful to compile some sort of database of members’ experiences of what has survived to some extent.

Given enough data, I would be very willing to collate the responses later, say late October or November. With potatoes I am particularly interested to hear of what has been blighted but has stored well. I hope this may prove useful when members come to buying seed potatoes for next year.

Please contribute only if your potato crop has suffered foliage blight.

That way it might be possible to identify those varieties which have shown some resistance to tuber blight.

It would be useful if you could follow this format:

Variety
Amount of tuber blight on lifting
Amount of tuber blight in storage
Any other relevant comment

Please do come back to your contribution and edit it if necessary, but please try to avoid general chat about blight, of which there is plenty elsewhere on the forum

Looking forward to some useful information,

Alan

edit 16/08/07

If you have had blight, you could also indicate varieties which resisted (?) foliage blight. See my today's post below.

Here's my first contribution:

Cosmos
Some tubers affected at lifting
None affected after storage

Nicola
No tubers affected at lifting
No tubers affected after storage

Dunbar Standard
No tubers affected at lifting
No tubers affected after storage
A light crop as blight struck so early before tubers had reached full size

Alan

We planted all potatoes by the end of March. Saw first signs of blight on leaves at the end of June. Dug them all up by July 1st as damage limitation. All stored in cardboard wine boxes in unheated brick outbuilding. A good crop of all except Ratte which were all tiny, and Cara which were much smaller than usual.

If we found potatoes rotten with blight in storage we removed them and any that had touched them and in worst cases, used a clean box.

Arran Pilot
All eaten without storing, no problems

Red Duke of York
No tubers affected at lifting
Most affected after 2 weeks' storage. They weren't rotten but had brown markings all the way through. The worst crop of all for blight.


Ratte
No tubers affected at lifting
Quite a few rotten after 2 weeks storage
None affected after 4 weeks storage
None affected after 6 weeks storage

Estima
No tubers affected at lifting
A few rotten after 2 weeks storage
None affected after 4 weeks storage
None affected after 6 weeks storage

Cara
No tubers affected at lifting
A few rotten after 2 weeks storage
None affected after 4 weeks storage
None affected after 6 weeks storage

International Kidney
No tubers affected at lifting
One or two affected after 2 weeks storage
None affected after 4 weeks storage
None affected after 6 weeks storage

Wilja
No tubers affected at lifting
One or two affected after 2 weeks storage
None affected after 4 weeks storage
None affected after 6 weeks storage

Romano
No tubers affected at lifting
One or two affected after 2 weeks storage
None affected after 4 weeks storage
None affected after 6 weeks storage

Nicola
No tubers affected at lifting
None affected after 4 weeks storage
None affected after 6 weeks storage

Kestrel
No tubers affected at lifting
None affected after 4 weeks storage
None affected after 6 weeks storage

Hope this is what you want. Will a fortnightly update be helpful?

-------------
Granny

Granny

Very useful.

hanks

Alan

Our experiences were

Cara
Leaves hardly affected by blight
No tubers affected at lifting at end of July
None yet affected during storage (as at 13/08/07)

Cherie (Red Salad potato)
No visible blight on leaves
No tubers affected at lifting from June - July
None yet affected during storage (as at 13/08/07)

Note:
Both of the above were growing within 10 feet of my tomatoes, which were wiped out by blight. Most other people on our allotment had badly blighted potatoes. We must have been very lucky.


Colin

Rattie got the blight, the leaves had died down we thought they were ready so dug them out only to find them black and a poor crop.

Accent, British Queen & Deseree no problems.

Cara & pink fir apple not dug out yet.

Bren

Kestrel - foliage completely blighted, lifted potatoes not affected as yet
Anya - foliage completely blighted, lifted potatoes affected by approx 5%
Lady Balfour - foliage completely blighted, lifted potatoes affected by approx 1%
Sarpo Mira - neither foliage nor potatoes affected

Colin M has suggested:

I noticed you suggest:
"Please contribute only if your potato crop has suffered foliage blight.
That way it might be possible to identify those varieties which have shown some resistance to tuber blight. "

Isn't it a good idea to mention varieties that didn't get blight this year? That would help us home in on any better varieties.....??

At the end of the day, I suspect a lot will also come down to local variations too, but this is still a good idea.


Colin

Do feel free to list those varieties that resisted foliage blight - but again, only if you have had foliage blight on others, or on outdoor tomatoes. If you have had no blight at all (lucky you!) the information will not be useful.

Alan

Just finished digging up my spuds. First time I have grown them on an allottment. I bought the "blight busters" collection from T&M. Results roughly these (but some observer bias- I dug the earlies after all the rain, so may not have been all blight damage):
Lady Balfour-very badly affected foliage and tubers. virtually none edible.
Orla- grew these in sacks at home and harvested early, so not really affected and good yield.
Markies-foliage and tubers very affected.
Valor- foliage moderately affected, but tubers not too bad. fair yield.
Sarpo Axona- foliage and tubers entirely blight free. Excellent crop of mostly huge red potatoes!
sarpo Mira-slightly less successful than the Axonas, but still very little bight on foliage or tubers.
I grew both the Sarpos and the Valor using the no- dig method.
Although the blight didn't ruin my crop entirely, I had lots of slug damage.
I did try dithane spray (two applications, two weeks apart.) I think it helped a bit, but certainly didn't save the worst affected ones.
I'm giong to do all Sarpos next year, and first earlies in sacks in the garden, in an effort to avoid all use of dithane.
Just had sarpo Axona for dinner 6 yr old daughter said"do I have to eat these? they don't taste of anything!"-and she was right.

All my varieties - see below - suffered from blight, though Lady Christl were mostly lifted before it really struck. I don't follow the advice about cutting off the foliage etc., but what I do do is to carefully wash all potatoes before storage. It takes time but also saves cook a bit of time.

Lady Christl, Witchhill, Aura, Charlotte and King Edwards - no storage problems.
Aura and Salad Blue - a few potatoes rotted in store.

I hope I don't regret saying this but my second cropping Charlotte potatoes are looking very healthy - sown Aug 9th. I have dithane ready just in case.

We have only just started lifting our Sarpo Mira and neither foliage nor tubers are at all affected by blight - the blight-resistance claim certainly seems to be correct. All our other varieties (Kestrel, Anya, Lady Balfour) were badly affected by blight in the foliage and some tubers as well, but I will report on that in, say, November.

Kestrel

on lifting, 3% affected

after 6 weeks in store, 1% affected

when blight noticed on foliage I removed it all. The crop was grown in chesterfield

Red Duke of York (sort of)
Folliage affected on 40% of plants
Totally red skinned tubers all affected at lifting
White with pink eye tubers unaffected at lifting
None stored for later use.

Note - Not sure why I got the variation in colour between tubers. First time growing this variety so not sure what they should look like.

http://www.britishpotatoes.co.uk/duke-of-york/

Someone send them a picture or two then I can find out

Just had a check through all our stored potatoes whose foliage was severely blighted:
Kestrel, Anya and Lady Balfour - only two potatoes slightly dubious in storage

(Sarpo Mira - neither foliage nor potatoes affected by blight)