Is there life after potato blight?

[amanda-from-grantham]

Having been caught out by blight, we shall have to put this year down to (lack of!) experience. However, is it going to affect our gardening activities next year? We have a four year rotation in raised beds. Many thanks for your help.

[Geoff]

I think the Irish famine was caused by three consecutive blight years. Was that because the weather was conducive to blight three years running, persistence of the disease or bad practice keeping it hosted from one year to the next?
If you clean up well, rotate and don't allow volunteers it shouldn't persist to next year.

[Jenny Green]

The reasons for the Irish potato famine include the fact that only one variety was grown (called Lumpers, apparently), so the susceptibility to blight was total. A range of varieties should give a range of resistance.

[amanda-from-grantham]

Thanks for the reassurance - I'd had visions of not being able to grow spuds for 20 years or something horrible! But - oh glory - the prospect of trying to get every last tiny dot of a potato out of three raised beds

[Elderflower]

I have a slight problem with my rotation - as it were!
In my allotment, after taking out the permanent areas, fruit trees, asparagus bed, etc, potatoes take up nearly half my land.
I can`t work out how I can do a proper rotation. The best I can do is alternating potatoes with the properly rotated beds. Or just planting a few spuds - which is a shame `cause we eat a lot of them.
Any ideas? I`d be grateful for advice.

[Primrose]

I have a similar rotation problem with my tomatoes. My veggie patch is too small and partially shaded so really not suitable for climbing beans and tomatoes. So I resort to growing these two in a south facing border and only have the option to rotate their positions in alternate years. It's probably not enough to deter blight from the soil, and I also suspect that over many years I have been depleting the soil nutrition levels by doing this. Apart from heavy manuring I can't think how else to reduce the blight vulnerability. Does anybody have any evidence that heavy manuring and improving soil fertility helps to reduce blight susceptibility?

[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

[Elderflower]

Does anybody have any advice or thoughts about the problem of rotating potatoes when they take up 50% of the land? (Previous post in this thread)
Or is it just, "Grow fewer potatoes."
Hope not!

[amanda-from-grantham]

I know what you mean Elderflower. Spuds are probably our favourite crop and in the 5 years we've been growing veg we'd never come across blight. Our 3 (spud) of 11 in total raised beds succumbed totally to blight and we didn't realise what it was If wet and warm summers become more common, what will us spud lovers do?!? Sorry - can't help you with your rotation problem. Good luck.

[theothermarg]

i escape blight most years by only planting 1st and 2nds as my allotment always gets it weather you have rotated or not i don,t ever grow tomatoes there. this year went wrong as due to a broken ankle in march i was late planting and it was some time before i could dig them up and of course blight was very early due to the wet. so if you must grow maincrop do it in a bit you havn,t used the last 2 years marg

[WigBag]

A query, how viable is the blight spore on soil with no 'host' potato to infect?

I seem to recall that the idea of cutting down the haulms and leaving the spuds under soil was so that the spore became inaffective as well as allowing the skins to firm up on the spuds.
The spore landing on the leaves initiates the blight and as it cannot jump off the ground onto the leaf, normal rotation should be fine, or am I being naive?

[theothermarg]

i cut mine down as soon as i noticed it about then left it 3 weeks but still got a few blighted ones i understand it can get in damaged potatoes! they are so mushy i find it hard to remove all the matter
i shall plant earlier next year all being well
marg

[Lurganspade]

The reasons for the Irish potato famine include the fact that only one variety was grown (called Lumpers, apparently), so the susceptibility to blight was total. A range of varieties should give a range of resistance.

I remember watching a TV programme about the Irish potato famine.

Yes the problem was that everyone grew the same variety and those were particularly bad years for blight.
Potatoes grown as "certified" seed, is I believe only grown above 500 feet,in Scotland and Northern Ireland,to stop green fly transmitting diseases between plants.
So that is one reason for potatoes; you should never save your old potatoes,you may only be carrying diseases over from one crop to the next. Yes some people will say that they have done so for yonks and never had any problems,that's life!
Other crops in the "blight years" were not affected, only potatoes!

[Monika]

Amanda, I suppose you could grow only blight-resistant varieties like Sarpo Mira and Sarpo Axona, but as you will see from another thread on this forum, not everone likes their taste. Another variety is Lady Balfour which is fairly resistant.

We grew Anya, Lady Balfour, Kestrel and Sarpo Mira this year and, although the foliage of the first three succumbed to blight, the stored potatoes have been fine to date. So, blight isn't the end of potato growing it seems.

Also, about the 'volunteers' which might pop up next year, am I not right in thinking that potato blight is spread by fungal spores arriving through the air, rather than being soil borne?

[Di]

While digging my new bit of allotment I found several spuds, this was late November, and the foliage was long gone but the tubers were fine.

They tasted very nice and had no slug damage or blight. This on a site where blight hits every year and the slugs are the size of carthorses.

So what are they? The previous occupants have left the area so any ideas...

Pale tubers with violet eyes. Any suggestions?

I'll go photo the last one (what have I come to?)and post it if someone can tell me how.

Off to the pub now - I clearly need to get out more!