Topic: I've never seen anything like this before.

[French-Dream]

When I was digging the last few rows of reds last week,  I noticed what I thought was the roots of the potatoes.  When I came to clean them and bag, I found that the "roots" were from the couch grass in the bed where the spuds were.




I've cut one today just to see what had happened and found what you see in these photos.

The couch grass has grown in to the tuber...have you guys & gals come across this before??

 

[gray1720]

Well, well. I've heard of it happening (another good reason to keep the bloody stuff off your plot!), but I've never seen it until your photo now.

Adrian

[Tee Gee]

Yes I saw it many years ago when I first took over a plot that had a fair amount of couch grass in it!

It is fairly common because many people use potatoes as a first crop to clean up the ground.

As Gray mentioned it may happen again until you rout out all of the couch, which is not easy!

So be very careful when you are digging and try and get every bit of the root out, as just a piece about an inch long will still grow in to a fair sized plant/root by next year.



BTW: Is that a keel slug next to it?

Both of these often go together!

[Palustris]

Often see this done to bulbs in the flower border, especially to Camassias which are fairly big bulbs.

[French-Dream]

BTW: Is that a keel slug next to it?
Both of these often go together!

No not a slug TG...it's the piece of couch roots that I pulled from the slice of spud in the first photo.

[Silverleaf]

I dug up a potato which has a couch grass stem grown right through it and out the other side!

[Paulh]

I dug up a potato which has a couch grass stem grown right through it and out the other side!

Same here, and, as said above, it was in the first crop when I had just started and had to clear the plot. It didn't affect the eating quality.

[ed dibbles]

Your potato experience has happened to me before and couch grass is difficult to eradicate in ornamental flower borders because of clump infiltration from the couch roots.

Yet despite its thuggish appearance it is actually one of the easiest perennial weeds to control on allotments or vegetable patches. The roots don't go down that far, no more that a forks depth and they, pull up easily and are easy to see. A methodical approach to clearing ground usually does the trick.

So often new plot holders have the idea of rotavating their couch, bindweed, creeping thistle infested plots, attempting to save work by clearing ground quickly yet all they really do is propagate these perennial weeds by chopping them up into smaller pieces potentially making the problem worse not better.

Couch grass is also highly sensitive to Glyphosate.

Growing potatoes to break up rough ground and help clear weeds is a good idea as long as you don't expect 100% top notch crops.