BLIGHT !!South Yorks...

[growmore]

Been gardening a lot of years but this is the first time i have seen blight ..
It has spread up our allotments starting in the east and worked west..
So it's  top's off and burned, then a blast of the soil with the flame gun .
What is the chance of the spuds under these haulms storing ..
I will leave them  a while then lift em ...
If there's a good chance they wont store I will lift em after flame gun .   
Use what we can and give the rest away ... There's 5 rows of condors each 12 yards long ....   Been lifting them as we needed em for about 3 weeks and they are a good size ..

[growmore]

[RobinOfTheHood]

Well, I was dumb enough to open my mouth on another thread and say that I hadn't got blight...that cursed it didn't it?  ::)

About half my outdoor toms and all the spuds have copped it, and tbh it happens seemingly every year, it's just earlier this year. So it's bordeaux mixture on the greenhouse toms, and Dithane on all the outdoor stuff (too late for most of the pots tho).

I wouldn't normally use any sprays, like most people on here I try to be as organic as I can, but I've had about half a dozen tomatoes so far and couldn't bear to lose them all so early in the year, and after looking at toxicology reports I'm not too worried. After all, if I have to buy them from the supermarket they've probably had much more pesticide applied....

[Multiveg]

Well, I was dumb enough to open my mouth on another thread and say that I hadn't got blight...that cursed it didn't it?  ::)

About half my outdoor toms and all the spuds have copped it, and tbh it happens seemingly every year, it's just earlier this year. So it's bordeaux mixture on the greenhouse toms, and Dithane on all the outdoor stuff (too late for most of the pots tho).

I wouldn't normally use any sprays, like most people on here I try to be as organic as I can, but I've had about half a dozen tomatoes so far and couldn't bear to lose them all so early in the year, and after looking at toxicology reports I'm not too worried. After all, if I have to buy them from the supermarket they've probably had much more pesticide applied....

Greenhouse toms shouldn't get blight - have you been watering with rainwater? Perhaps there is a leak?

[RobinOfTheHood]

They tend to get it a little later in the year, when it's very damp in the mornings (Septemberish), at least that's what's happened for the last couple of years.

No leaks, and no watering for the ones in the ground at all...with the amount of rain we've had I don't think I'll need to either.  ::)

The ones in buckets are being watered from below with rainwater, but don't get me wrong, none of the greenhouse ones have it yet. The bordeaux is just to prevent it, seeing as it's obviously in the air all around.

I read somewhere a couple of weeks ago (could have been on here) that Dithane showed some effectiveness in actually getting rid of blight on toms after it had started, thought it'd be worth a try, nowt to lose an all that... :(

[Multiveg]

Good luck.
Just hope that the seed potato suppliers have more luck than us!

[Kepouros]

To get back to Growmore`s original question, the answer depends entirely on how far the blight had advanced in the plants before he cut them down.  Despite what many on this site believe, blight is not instantaneously transferred from the leaf to the potato, but has to work its way back.  The first signs are, of course, the blackish spots on the leaflets, which over a day or two form dead patches on the leaflets.  As the disease travels further the leaf stems will show brown areas, and similar areas or streaks will then start to appear in the stems immediately below the affected leaf joint, and the stem will start to soften.  This process usually takes several days, and can be considerably delayed by regular removal of affected foliage and spraying.  The only exception is when a spore lands directly in a leaf axil of a stem, attacking the stem directly and causing a blackish lesion.

If the haulm is removed while the brown areas of the stem are still well above the soil level and the base of the stem is still firm, then the tubers will almost certainly be perfectly o.k, although it is wise to hose them off and examine each one before storage.   If the haulm is left on until the brown areas near the soil level, or if the base of the stem is very soft or rotten (not to be confused with the natural softness of a top dying off naturally) then the potatoes, or some of them, at least, are likely to be affected to some degree.

Provided that the tubers are left for a couple of weeks for the skins to set, affected tubers will then usually be showing the initial signs of any infection.  These are usually slight brownish indentations in the skin of the tuber, below which is a dry granular brownish rot extending for up to a half inch or so into the tuber; this will slowly spread further into the tuber by finger-like extensions until the whole tuber is infected.

[HO]

This is undoubtably the worst blight year for many years but it would be premature to think that this year's levels are indicative of the future. Newbies out there should not be put off from growing potatoes or toms next year when the temperatures and humidity levels will probably be completely different. the problem this year has been the combinations of these exceeding certain times quite often ( and blight does need these levels to be exceeded to spread fast).
With regard to cutting off the tops of spuds my advice is to remove them all if you have more than one full leaf including leaflets of one plant infected. By the time a substantial part of one plant is infected the disease has almost certainly travelled below ground level even if the stem seems OK. On mine this year I had blight in a tuber with only one leaf of the plant infected so I then chopped the lot.For Newbies..on allotments where others may be careless about blight only grow earlies and second earlies and you should be ok without spraying. And plant them early depending on your frost conditions. And dont let the blighters get you down.