The most disgusting potato ever!

[artichoke]

This afternoon I dug up a huge Sarpo potato, cut it open this evening for supper, and out poured the most revoltingly smelly liquid from a black and nasty interior that I have ever experienced.

What is this? They do not succumb to blight, but secretly rot? Or what? Has anyone else found this?

Nice looking large red potato, horrible inside.

[artichoke]

[saddad]

Yeak... I've just dug up a line of Sarpo Axona...  :-X

[artichoke]

So what happened????

Was it horrible?

[saddad]

Haven't eaten any yet... still finishing the Epicure... lovely baked Potato with tea..............  :)

[Duke Ellington]

Try this web site...

http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/factsheets/Potato_Detection.htm

Duke

[Lottiman]

Hmm. Planted sarpo axona this time to and i haven't dug any yet! A chap two plots down missed a few of his last year they popped up in the middle of his seed bed this year and he just left them.He dug them up last week i have never seen potatoes that big.

[gwynleg]

Oh dear - I have them too - hope this is a one off.....

[chriscross1966]

hope mine are ok... had a couple in fo tra trial, harvested last week... they're on my verandah hardening up... will lookkj tomorrow,...

chrisc

[artichoke]

Sorry, did not mean to imply all Sarpos could get like this, and I have been digging and eating mine for several weeks - that's why this one was such a nasty surprise.

Fortunately I cut it open in the sink and the smelly liquid vanished down the plug hole. It's the sort of smell you get when a potato rots away in the sack all winter and you don't spot it - but possibly more intense....

I am reading that site, thanks, a lot to get through and did not spot it on the first quick scan.

[sawfish]

This afternoon I dug up a huge Sarpo potato, cut it open this evening for supper, and out poured the most revoltingly smelly liquid from a black and nasty interior that I have ever experienced.

So this meal wont be going in your next recipe book then?

[Plot69]

I only grow Sarpo, nothing else.

Last year I grew Sarpo, Cara and Desiree.  Both the Cara and Desiree were riddled with worm, approx 80% were inedible. The Sarpo's were very large and uniform in size and the Mrs loved them. So this year and from now on they are all I'm going to grow.

They're not the best tasting potato by a long way but, at least on my plot, they are the most reliable and highest yielding variety I've tried.

I have had the odd slimy, smelly one but I always assumed they were the seeds I set in the first place.

[:(]

Theres also the Potato Council website for pictures of pests, diseases and disorders

http://www.potato.org.uk/department/knowledge_transfer/pests_and_diseases/viewer.html

I did read at one point that the Potato Council was going to be one of the quangos for the chop which would be a shame as they have this database and one for potato varieties and they also run Blightwatch.

[artichoke]

Thanks for the website which I will read carefully, having failed to find exactly my potato problem on the other. I have had more potatoes since, with smelly rotting interiors - not many, but memorable.

Sarpo varieties  (apart from this problem) have done well for me this year, but I am not sure I will grow them again. They are very hard, difficult to peel, and not very tasty. As our site did not seem to get much blight this year, their main advantage was not that important.

[realfood]

I have grown the Sarpo varieties for years with no problems cooking them. I only peel any damaged skin, as the vitamins are just under the skin. I microwave them till they are soft- I have never seen hard bits.

[Vinlander]

The last time I had something similar it was when I dug some early and didn't recognise that the original seed spud (queen?) was still firm - on the outside.

If the sarpos are very late (?) or this plant was in shade? dry shade? then I suppose it's just possible that the seed might still look sound?

(all the ? are because potato is probably the crop I have least experience with).

Cheers.

[chriscross1966]

The last time I had something similar it was when I dug some early and didn't recognise that the original seed spud (queen?) was still firm - on the outside.

If the sarpos are very late (?) or this plant was in shade? dry shade? then I suppose it's just possible that the seed might still look sound?

(all the ? are because potato is probably the crop I have least experience with).

Cheers.

I think that's entirely possible, when i dug out my Sarpo's the seed spuds still looked fine..... true of some other varieties this year..... one started to rot in storage almost immediately though.... found it quickly enough, don't think it's cross-infected anything (fingers crossed...)

chrisc

[artichoke]

Thanks for all your ideas. I'm quite sure my problems are not with the original seed potatoes - I can recognise those when they survive.

None of them are grown in areas that have shade during the day, though at the moment one of the beds gets mid-afternoon shade because of the autumn sun angle. The others are in bright light all day, and I have been able to water them all quite a lot over the drier weeks of the summer.

The huge bulk of my Sarpos are perfect (I must have planted about 100), apart from the ones I bashed, or slugs got into. But I am noticing a nasty smelly rot developing on the surface of a few of them, so I think there is an infection of some sort. I am watching batches of them drying on trays very carefully before adding them to their sacks.

I have come across a few more with some sort of inner rot that is not very obvious on the surface, but nothing as bad as the one that started off this thread!

[Robert_Brenchley]

Did they have blight? I know they're resistant, but I have heard of it happening with the new strain.

[Tattieman]

I will put my neck on the line and suggest that your large potatoes have hollow heart/boss centres.
Basically they have grown quickly at some stage and the inside of the potato has turned hollow.
In turnips it is normally a lack of boron. If it is not that then there are things like ring rot and brown rot but I would not think it would be those diseases.