Topic: After the potatoes

[Lady Cosmos]

Is it possible to transplant my strawberries to the place where my potatoes heve been this year????

[Ellen K]

Funny you should ask that: i bought some plants from T&M to start a patch and the little book that came with them says not, to reduce the risk of Verticillium Wilt.

[pigeonseed]

Oh really? I started my strawberry bed last year after potatoes! Oh well, too late now!

[Ellen K]

After I read the little book, looking around I think we have got it on our site.

It may be on the tomatoes, you see this leaf curl effect, the whole leaf becomes boat shaped.  The vets said it was just lack of water but that's why it's called Wilt - the vasculature of the plant is affected by the fungus and can't transport up enough water.

Like everyone else, we've got the dreaded onion rot too.  Possibly the weather has allowed a few dormant spores to take off.  My neighbours plot is tuning blue with his spraying.  At this rate we won't be able to grow anything next year.

So, even though I am a complete novice, my advice is to rethink and make sure your crop rotation and hygiene techniques are poo hot.  Be careful out there.

[brown thumb]

and i was planning to do the same as i have a few along the edge of the potatoe bed and was planing  to useit  as a nursery bed until i can get the new one sorted as iam moving the old 3 year one this year will have to rethink  :-\

[manicscousers]

Our new strawberry bed is full of peas at the moment  ;D

[Ellen K]

For me, the bummer is that where the potatoes are now seems to be the least diseased part of the plot.  And next to the berry plants so I was going to bung my collection of strawberry plants and their runners in there.

This is what my tomato leaves look like, Sungold plants (the Legend plants seem unaffected).



The plants themselves are quite strong so perhaps this is not a fungal disease - just plants getting a bit a damage from the hot sun and the cold nights.   I have a lot of weeds and have read that they make F&V Wilt risks worse.  But maybe it is me who has got plant hypochondria from too much googling.

Still, I am not sure I want to take a risk .....

[OllieC]

Why isn't that blight? I always pick off any leaves like that & send them for landfill.

[brown thumb]

 i was going to say the b word but not sure ,any dodgy looking weed or plant goes in my general /house hold rubbish bag

[goodlife]

Doesn't look like VW to me neither..more like B.. :-X
Curling of the leaves are caused by temperature fluctuation..differenced between day and night temps.

[Ellen K]

One of the reasons I thought it might be Wilt is because it doesn't look like blight.

I've had blight and it's pretty aggressive ... and you see these black patches on the stems and the plant succumbs pretty quickly.  But perhaps it is an exceptionally polite and well behaved strain of blight.

Having think on, it's just that some of the early leaves have got frazzled in the weather.  But I will be keeping a close eye on them just in case  :)

[OllieC]

I get blight every year, and out of the past 8 years have only lost an entire crop once (the year I tried not spraying!). It starts like that & then spreads to the stems, where the whole plants collapse very quickly. By picking off any leaf like that & spraying with Bordeaux after it rains, I stay ahead of it.

The yellowing halo around the diseased parts certainly makes it look like fungal & it's clearly spreading on the leaves. VW spreads from the roots up - or it did on the 3 acres of strawberries we had with it in my fruit farming days.

[Morris]

I think it may be early blight. Usually starts as circles or splotches on lower leaves, with a halo. Less aggressive than late blight. I should pick them off and bin them, and keep an eye on the plants.

Sorry Lady Cosmos I can't help with your original question.  ;)

[davyw1]

If you look at that leaf lower right of the support  the spots on it do look like the start of blight
Certainly hope its not but what ever it is i would be getting any infected leaves off like it was yesterday

[Lady Cosmos]

I think I will have to find another place to be safe.......
Thanks anyway....

[OllieC]

I think I will have to find another place to be safe.......
Thanks anyway....

Sorry, to answer your original question. As mentioned but not made clear, I've seen the effects on a few acres of strawberries following potatoes (with a few year's gap) and would not ever put strawbs where I know spuds have been.

[Ellen K]

Dearie me, and I thought I was alarmist  ::).

Had another gander and I'm pretty sure it is where water has got on the leaves and they've been scorched by the sun.  I can see the same on many plants on the site though to be fair I can also see some potatoes that have withered up and died back prematurely (though not on my plot) with some disease.  But having seen potato and tomato blight first hand, I don't think it's that.

I am not sure what you mean by keeping ahead of blight - by the time you see the effects of blight, it is in the plant and you can rip leaves off and spray until you are left with blue stalks but it doesn't make that much difference it is game over for the plant.  Where sprays are licenced, it is usually for 2 sprays per season so I spray mid-July and then if necessary early August.  Everything I've read suggests that the most important thing is timing, what you spray with is of lesser importance.  So they are due their first spray and they got it this morning.

But it will be interesting to see the outcome blight or not and I will report back what happens to the plants.

Lady Cosmos, good luck with the Strawbs, they are well worth growing, much better fruit than bought.

[OllieC]

Sorry, if you call that alarmist then I haven't made myself clear. Most years end with blight for most outdoor growers, especially on allotments where neighbours are negligent in dealing with it. So most of us with a bit of experience know exactly what it looks like. You're referring to the later stages, when treatment is futile but it really is possible to stay ahead of it. The aim is to stop it from getting established in the stems. Do as I say, pick off leaves like that & spray with Bordeaux (for which the advise on the label is every 2 weeks but sometimes that's too often & sometimes it's not often enough - spraying after a Smith period is best), then you'll stay one step ahead of it. I'm always the last person with plants standing on our site (apart from that one year when I was the same as the others).

It is possible that the pictures show a different fungus, but the yellow halos around the brown bits mean it is almost certainly a fungus of some sort. It is definitely not scorching. I will bet you a £50 donation to the charity of the winner's choice that if you leave those leaves on you will have what you call blight within the next month.


p.s. edited to add - just realised this looks a bit arsey - it's not meant to be, I shouldn't try replying whilst feeding the kids!

[green lily]

Well my second early spuds have the same scorches as on those tomatoes and I reckon its blight. They've had a couple of sprays of bordeaux [ one got washed of the next night.. :( I'm cutting leaves and digging up  the ones with the most  yellow. Funny enough at the moment the toms and the Pink FAs are clear but I have my beady eyes on them and the spray will be out again when the weekend thunder storms have gone. Everything except the spuds [which are clean] goes in the wheelie.

[Ellen K]

No, I don't think you're arsey and I hope I don't sound arrogant.  Funnily enough, I didn't get any blight last year until right at the end and was saying to another plotholder that we hadn't had the July blight last year and she said "oh yes we did".

I got the July blight the first year I grew toms outside and I'd stand by the statement that chopping bits off and spraying does almost nothing once the plant has got the disease.  

But I will let you know and I'll be honest.  If the plants develop the black stems I would just pull them up and cut out all the intermediate stages.

And my charity donations are my own business but kudos to you for the offer  :)

Edited to add: the 2 sprays limit is for indoor lettuce  ??? for some reason.