I lifted my kestrel a couple of weeks ago. Although they were large they were scabby. After leaving them to dry out in the shed for a couple of weeks bagged them. In less than a week they have started rotting. My maincrop, KE, lifted last weekend and left to dry in the shed have also started doing the same. What is causing this. The KE were also scabby although I have never put any lime down on the plot.
How did you bag them?
Maybe you put them into store damp. Did you lift them on a dry day and let them rest on the surface for a few hours?
Common scab does break up the surface and let rots in but in itself it doesn't do any harm. I suspect they've got tuber blight. Can you post a pic?
to be honest it looks like blight however the spuds I lifted and ate were okay. There isn't the blighty pong I had last year though. Whilst it was a dry day when i lifted them I had to bung them in the shed on the floor straight away so maybe that's what helped it. Don't think I am cut out for growing spuds. Looks like I am going to have a freezer full of spuds this year......
I've got scab on some of my Kestrels for the first time ever, as said leave them out to dry and store in hessian or paper sacks in cool dry, frost free conditions, even if they started rotting it would take a lot longer than that in store, maybe there was a dodgy one in there and it's affected a few others.
If it was blight which I doubt, you would have known by the foilage being affected. :-\ ;D ;D ;D
I don`t think that this can be in any way the result of bagging the spuds in a slightly damp condition, although they shouldn`t be damp anyway if the shed has a wood floor and they`ve been there for 2 weeks. The fact that rot has set in so quickly, particularly with the KEs in just a week, indicates that the tubers were well infected before they were put into store.
As Unwashed says, scab is not of itself a great problem, although it does cause skin lesions, and for that reason the scabs should be thoroughly dried before storage - I leave mine on the greenhouse bench overnight, then any still not completely dry get a quick waft from a hair dryer.
Without seeing a potato it isn`t posssible to tell with any accuracy what the cause is. If you can cut an affected potato in halves (if possible directly through one of the scabs) and post pictures of the two cut faces we would have a better chance.
Some of our Nadine we harvested today were scabbed and they dont usually get it. We put it down to the sudden wet weather, maybe or maybe not. We leave ours to dry for a few hours on wire frames. Today we had wind and sunshine. Just right for dryind them out before packing.
Discussing the scab with one of my lotty mates today, we come to the conclusion that that the council compost had caused this when it hadn't been well mixed in with the soil in the dry conditions.
We have both been growing Kestrels for over 5 years each and never come across scab on them before. :-\ ??? ;D ;D ;D