Blight?

[Gordonmull]

Hi folks

Can someone please help me regarding my maincrop potatoes?

I first started noticing small purplish marks on them about a week or two ago. These have kind of formed into brownish marks and there seem to be lots of lesions now. The marks are dry and crispy, not like I've heard blight described as "watery lesions". The variety is Romano, with Nicola and Home Guard growing nearby, unaffected.

I'm going away for a week tomorrow, so if it's late blight I guess I should be cutting the haulms down ASAP yeah? I hope it's not.

There are also round, reddish-purple nodules forming the the leaf axils of some plants, with little leafy sprouts starting to come out of them, if that's anything relevant too.

Photos below:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/57278801@N04/7753586412/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/57278801@N04/7753587014/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/57278801@N04/7753587490/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/57278801@N04/7753588010/

Cheers

Gord

[Gordonmull]

[electric landlady]

That looks like blight to me. I think the watery lesions are what you get on the actual spuds, not the leaves. If the spots are only on some leaves, you could just try picking those leaves off rather than removing all of the haulms.

Edit: I see you posted this over a week ago so you've probably already sorted this. But anyway for what it's worth yes I think it was blight!

[Jayb]

Sorry missed this, hope I'm wrong but I agree with Electric Landlady it looks very much like blight.

[Robert_Brenchley]

It looks like blight. Mine's at a more advanced stage; I'm planning to cut the stems down tomorrow.

[Gordonmull]

Thanks for the replies folks. Just got back this evening but I cut down the haulms before I left. The lesions were all over most plants so i thought I'd better just take the worst case scenario and go for it. I didn't want to come back to a withered mess.

At least now I know I took the right course of action and I know what it looks like in the flesh for next year.