Author Topic: Catastrophic Potato Problem  (Read 60263 times)

ceres

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Catastrophic Potato Problem
« on: June 04, 2008, 21:18:36 »
A chap on our site sent the RHS photgraphs of a problem with his potatoes.  They have replied that the damage is typical of that from hormonal weedkiller from contaminated manure.  I've been watching my spuds for a couple of weeks now and at first I thought they had got a little frosted but hearing today's news, I've realised I've got the same problem.  And so has everyone else around me who has manured overwinter.  It's not yet conclusive that only folks who have manured have got the problem, it's a big site (over 200 plots) so it will take a while to get round everyone, but it's not looking good.  There's no-one yet who didn't manure with the problem.

We have our manure delivered by a farmer who stores the stuff in his fields until it's partially rotted down then he delivers it.  I'd say around a third of the plots have had his manure.  No more deliveries are being allowed until we know what is causing it.  One of my neighbours dug up a whole bed of his potatoes today.  Apart from the obvious top damage, there are no potatoes on the roots, just the seed potato.

My bed with ultra, first and second earlies is completely affected, not one healthy plant.  I have one row of second earlies in a bed with the early maincrops and a couple of the second earlies have been hit.  I have a third bed of late maincrops and again a couple have been affected.  My two lots of container-grown are fine (no manure).

Some plants are being taken down to Wisley on Friday to see if they can shed any more light before we go and knee-cap the farmer and we have unused manure which might need to be tested if Wisley confirms the diagnosis.  The other possibility is a virus, so I wondered if anybody here has seen this before.

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The plants look like they have bolted because the leaves are small and crinkled up.

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I dug up this Swift today.  It was the strongest one in the row but only about 9" high.  It was planted on 28 Feb into pre-warmed soil.  Apart from the seed potato it has 2 tiny embryo potatoes.  And it smelt a bit unpleasant.

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cambourne7

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #1 on: June 04, 2008, 21:38:47 »
Oh gosh honey thats bad, do you have to distroy the soil??

beanie3

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #2 on: June 04, 2008, 21:41:07 »
I cant shed any light - but that is really bad news......i woud be devasted.  keep us informed on what wisley say.

How many potted potatoes have you got?

ceres

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #3 on: June 04, 2008, 22:12:13 »
Cambourne,
It's hard to say what we might have to do.  If it's a herbicide we would need to know what it was and how long it stays in the soil.  If it's a virus, Wisley hopefully could advise how best to deal with it.

Beanie
I have an incinerator bin and a compost bag with I think 4 or 5 seed potatoes in each.  not much to show for having planted 70.

Thanks both for the concern, we're all a bit shell-shocked!

cambourne7

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #4 on: June 04, 2008, 22:16:10 »
might be worth checking what else might be affected in this growing season.

Hugs ceres   :-*

star

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #5 on: June 04, 2008, 22:20:15 »
Oh how awful for you all, lets hope its just this season thats affected.

As Cam says, keep an eye open for anything else that might suffer similar effects. Sincerely hope you find nothing else.
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ceres

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #6 on: June 04, 2008, 22:30:40 »
The neighbour who dug up his potatoes reckons his tomatoes have it too.  And the email from Wisley mentioned rasps as being particularly vulnerable, which I didn't really understand.

I don't want to leap to any conclusions but when you look at things that aren't doing well, you start wondering.  I have 10 asparagus crowns that I started from seed 2 years ago and 3 haven't come through this year - they had a thick mulch of manure.  And I haven't managed to grow a broad bean more than 6" high - they had manure dug in.  Probably co-incidence.

Sinbad7

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #7 on: June 04, 2008, 22:38:37 »
Hi ceres,

I am so sorry for you and would be devasted if it happened to my one bed let alone all the pots you have planted.

What I don't understand is if it is weedkiller as the RHS suggest how come they grew so well in the first place, one would think they wouldn't even have grown.

Good luck to whoever goes to Wisley on Friday and they find out for sure what has caused it.

Sinbad

tonybloke

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #8 on: June 04, 2008, 22:41:29 »
it pays to compost manure for a year before incorporating it, this lets nutrient levels stabilise and poisons to degrade. Sorry to hear about your crop disasters, it may be viral, spuds and toms from same family, hope news from rhs is positive, rgds, tony
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Suzanne

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #9 on: June 04, 2008, 23:14:44 »
Hope it turns out to be something that is both short-lived and treatable.

I hate mysteries like this, I had trouble with seedlings and other things I potted on this year with them dying back quickly or looking like they had leaf chlorosis. After thinking it was all sorts like damping off etc I finally had the sense to check the potting compost I had bought - pH was 5 which not a lot of veg plants like. I was able to change the compost and things okay now. I am not sure how I would cope if the soil was affected. But may be a point to check pH if it hasn't already been done - espcially as you mentioned an unpleasant smell which could be due to acidic conditions??

ceres

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #10 on: June 04, 2008, 23:32:21 »
I don't know either sinbad.  I'm only guessing that if it's some kind of hormonal weedkiller, the plant maybe has to absorb enough to do the damage rather than the kind that kills on contact?

I'm not sure I'll ever dare use manure again, tonybloke!  I think on balance viral would be a better answer for us.

That's a great suggestion Suzanne.  I think my kit is in the shed so I'll do it tomorrow.  It's always been 7.0 before so this will be interesting.

Thanks all!

Amazin

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #11 on: June 05, 2008, 00:19:00 »
ceres, I don't know if this is any help, but it could be a condition called Chickens and Hens caused by a nematode in your soil called Trichodorus:

http://www.sac.ac.uk/mainrep/pdfs/tn603soilnematodes.pdf

(check out Fig 1 for a pic).

Hope you don't mind this suggestion, it's just that someone I know who worked on a farm in Scotland had a very similar experience and told me it was diagnosed as Chickens and Hens. I don't know how it was treated or what the outcome was though, I'm sorry to say.

Sincere best wishes for a speedy remedy and future success.
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Trevor_D

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #12 on: June 05, 2008, 07:31:11 »
We had exactly this problem on our site this time last year. (I thought it was a virus and posted some photographs in the Pests & Diseases section if you want to compare.)

Like you, we contacted the RHS, who diagnosed hormone weed killer damage. We also sent the photos to DEFRA, who contacted us and sent someone to look at the site. He spent nearly an hour going over all possibilities and stated categorically that it was hormone weed killer damage. The only source on-site was the manure from our stables; he spoke to the owner who told him that the hay the horses used didn't have weed-killer on it, and that they didn't use it themselves. But, as a precaution, he suggested composting all manure before use.

But we have had a recurrence this year - not as bad yet. It's patchy, and attacks potatoes, tomatoes, broad beans & peas. We were advised - and have found this to be so - that if you treat the plants well (water, feed, etc) & spray if necessary, then they sort of recover.

I have reported this year's outbreak to DEFRA. I strongly suggest you do the same. Interestingly, the weather conditions this year were the same as last year, ie. a strong wind coming from the continent. I think it may not originate on-site, but could be wind-borne. (Last year we discovered quite a few other occurences, both locally and over other parts of the south.)

I also referred DEFRA to this Forum, so if anyone else has had similar problems, please report them.

ceres

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #13 on: June 05, 2008, 08:51:34 »
Amazin, many thanks for that.  Of course, I don't mind!  Any and all suggestions/ideas/solutions are very gratefully received.  I'm going to print it off and take it over to check in detail.

Trevor, thank you so much!  You're in north-west London, I'm in south-west London - relevant?  Were you advised that the crops are OK to eat - Wisley have said that they couldn't guarantee that there wouldn't be traces of the agent in crops.  I realise that's probably a bit of backside covering on their part but it does leave an uneasy feeling.

Also when you say water, feed and spray - spray with what?

Did you carry on using manure but composting it or did you stop using it alltogether but you still have the problem?

Sorry, so many questions!  I'm certainly going to contact DEFRA as you suggest.  I'll go and find you previous posts in the archive now.  Many, many thanks!





Trevor_D

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #14 on: June 05, 2008, 09:31:25 »
We sprayed as for blight. (Some of us had already done that before DEFRA arrived, and it seemed to put it 'on hold'.) And a foliar feed seemed to work.

As for eating the crops, the potatoes were fine. (I'm still here, a year down the line!) But the tomatoes & beans produced poorly anyway. And then the tomatoes were hit by early blight, so those plants that were already weak from the weedkiller damage got hit badly. But the rest of the plants - after repeated sprayings - cropped OK.

Incidentally, I never manure potatoes, but mine were still affected. (But not as badly as other folk who do manure.)

We still use stable manure, but try to go for the well-rotted stuff and leave (or compost) the strawy stuff from the outside. (Having said that, we mulched our strawberries with some of it yesterday.)

Two other things:

a) Our GH tomatoes were also affected, especially the plants near the open door. They were planted in commercial potting compost/growbag soil.

b) A few weeks back we could smell something in the air, which was reported in the press as the smell of fertilizer spread on the fields in Holland, or thereabouts.

ceres

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #15 on: June 05, 2008, 10:15:35 »
Thanks Trevor.  I've just sent the pictures off to DEFRA.

Curious that spraying for blight puts a bit of a hold on the damage.  I wonder if there's more than one thing going on - the weedkiller weakens the plant enough to let opportunistic disease/insect infestation take hold.  I've noticed that the damaged potatoes have far more slug damage on them - one or two plants were stripped right down to just the leaf veins.

As this year is shaping up to be another blight year anyway, spraying now makes sense.  I usually only spray the toms as our potatoes seem to escape it but I'd better get cracking on them and start feeding too.

The plants affected at the door of your greenhouse must confirm an airborne problem surely?  I wonder if there are any outbreaks south and east of us.  Good reason for reporting these things to DEFRA - they're the only people likely to see the whole picture.  I suppose with the scale of growing in Holland and with the right weather conditions, it's entirely conceivable that spraying from aircraft might end up here.  Sheesh!  As if it wasn't hard enough already!  If you think of anything else, please keep it coming!




Barnowl

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #16 on: June 05, 2008, 10:25:30 »
I'm North East of you but have been away and haven't been up to the allotment for over a week. Heading there tonight, will report back if anything strange. We normally only use composted manure but I did get one bag of organic mature from a GC for the spud bed last autumn.

To add to our normal worries,  Blightwatch have just emailed me to say that SW13 and SW15 are having a full Smith period. Haven't tried it before but I know I've some Bordeaux mixture somewhere and think I'd better dig it out.

ceres

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #17 on: June 05, 2008, 10:37:34 »
I was just about to pm you and isleworthtw7.  Great minds!  I sincerely hope your site doesn't have it.  Do let us know.

The full Smith alerts have been coming thick and fast here too - get that bordeaux out!

Trevor_D

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #18 on: June 05, 2008, 10:45:12 »
I got my warning from Blightwatch yesterday afternoon, so we went up & sprayed with a slightly dilute mix of copper fungicide.

Garjan

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Re: Catastrophic Potato Problem
« Reply #19 on: June 05, 2008, 10:47:56 »
Very sorry to hear about this problem. I already get angry with the OH when he is not handling the seedlings as I want him to.

This is an interesting thread for my (Dutch) government, though.
I printed it and will send it to our department of agriculture and to the University that specialises in agriculture and food quality.

Keep us posted, as I'm eager to know whether our agricultural industrial complex is causing transnational problems. Outraged if it does!

 

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