Topic: curled potato leaf

[jayarem]

My plot neighbour took over a recently cultivated plot a few months ago. His potatoes are coming through but a few of the plants( stalk about 4"/10cm) have started producing leaves that are tightly curled( like little maggots).All the plants affected are in a 1 yard strip of a 10 yard row.He has only used chicken manure this year but he fears the the previous owner has put hormonally affected manure in the ground last year. ( which has been a problem on our site).I'm new at potato growing so don't know if this is normal. However out of the 20 or so plants in the row, only these close together four have the tightly curled leafs.
Any clues please.

[sunloving]

Hi
It does sound like aminopyraloid.
The symptoms were first see in potatoes on fields in ireland so they are one of the susecptable crops.
The life of the aminopyraloid in soil is an estimated two years or more.
Weve been doing growth tests on our soil and its not as bad as last year but still stunts growth.

If you can grow things with thin leaves such as sweetcorn these are not affected as much , ive also found that my rasperries are pretty imune.
We had a long thread in pests and diseases have a search for it if you can and ceres put up some links to some useful sites.
good luck , theres no definative test (i wrote to the pesticides people to) . we always test our soil now before planting by taking the soil and planting beans and comparing these to those sown in normal unaffected soil.

hope its just a small stubborn patch!
best wishes
x sunloving

[flytrapman]

Its not a case of how big the leaves are
Selective weedkillers work on dicotyledon plants
Monocotyledon plants such as grasses and onions will not be affected

[sunloving]

sweetcorn are monocots

[saddad]

Welcome to A4A Jayarem  :)