Topic: Blight

[Merry Tiller]

Arrrrrrrrrgh  ???

[tim]

Is that a pest or a disease ?? = Tim

[kenkew]

Sounds like some sort of chokeing vine.

[Hugh_Jones]

With all those "r"s rolling it sounds very french.

[Merry Tiller]

Outdoor tomatoes + wet summer = Potato Blight + 5 months wasted

I grew 3 plants each of

Garden Pearl
Romano
Marglobe
Pink Brandywine
Black Krim
Caspian Pink

Managed to save a couple of handfulls of GP and 2 Marglobes, the rest are compost.

[tim]

A bit unfair, isn't it.

Did you spray? = Tim

[Merry Tiller]

No, we're organic as far as poss, will next year though

[tim]

Me too - but I always use Bordeaux on potatoes. = Tim

[Merry Tiller]

Your toms still OK then?

When do you start spraying?

[Hugh_Jones]

There`s no sort of set date to start spraying - you`ve just got to start before any sign of blight appears and preferrably before the foliage meets across the rows.  With the sort of summer we`ve had only weekly spraying is likely to provide much protection, and once blight appears there`s little point in further spraying - just cut down and remove the haulm and leave the bed alone for 3 weeks for the spores on the soil surface to die (you can hasten this process by using a flame gun over the bed, which will kill the spores and clean up any bits of diseased matter which you didn`t pick up).

You can play safe by sticking to 2nd early varieties as far as possible - planted early March they will be fully or almost fully mature by the time blight strikes.  Planting maincrop varieties earlier will not help, as whenever you plant them they simply will not start to initiate tuber growth until late July anyway.

[Merry Tiller]

Strange thing is the potatoes are spotless ( so far )

[Hugh_Jones]

The fact that blight has affected the foliage does not automatically mean that the potatoes are affected.  In fact it can usually take a couple of weeks or more to travel back down the plants and provided that you remove all the haulm before this happens the crop should be quite o.k, although not fully developed.  Unfortunately, if the potatoes are affected this will often not show at first, and the potatoes will look and taste o.k., but they just won`t store for any length of time.

My own maincrop get blight nearly every year, but not usually until about mid August, by which time the crop is just about mature, and using the method I mentioned earlier I have not had any problems with the crop or with storage.