Allotments 4 All

I've had to remove and destroy one of my potato plants and have pinched a leaf off another one because they've got blight.

In May?

It's been really dry. Although it did rain last night and it's damp today.

I'm getting an ominous feeling about the rest.  :'(

Are you sure it really is blight?  There are a number of other things some on our site last year looked very much like blight but turned out to be a huge ants nest.

Suggest you post a pic.  There are some great spud experts about.

Unlikely, the weather hasnt been right for it. Could be scorch from the very hot weather last week or cold damage or drought from the very dry weather.

Some of my spuds got frost scorched a week or two ago... add the baking weather from the last weekend and I can see why folks would confuse it with blight.... but as pointed out, it just isn't warm enough at night yet or anything like humid enough....

some of my potatoes got scored by the frost too only a couple of plants, i panicked about blight but definately from the frost

Oh darn. I knew I should've posted a picture, but I was so scared of it spreading I cut the plant off and got rid of it.

But we haven't had a frost for months. It's been cold overnight, but nothing drastic. The plant was much smaller than the others planted at the same time, so I just leapt to the worst conclusion as usual!

I will keep an eye on the rest and post before I cut if there are anymore like it!

hrumph... I got shot down in flames by someone last year for saying it was perfectly reasonable to confuse blight with other things! I still maintain that it's easily confused & agree that the conditions make it very unlikely...

I don't know where you are, Aqui, but in south east London we had a couple of nights of sub zero temperatures just a couple of weeks ago.  My chillies certainly felt it.  This could very well have done the damage to your tatties.

You must be not in the UK if you havent had frost for months. Temps less than 5c will  damage non-hardy plants. Here in the south it went down to 2c around 2 weeks ago, all the tops of my potatoes went and 15 tomatoes I had hardening off in a mini-greenhouse died overnight.

Its deffo not blight, If you are here in London then its very likely you would have had frosts, ??? on our sight my plot is pretty well protected and get away with light frosts but my spuds were well burnt with the frosts on the night/morning on the 11th-12th of this month.  :'(
I walk to work at 5.45am and there was no signs of frost that morning but the Sun came out early that day and thats where the burnt plants come from, mine are well on the way to recovery by the way.      ;D ;D ;D

If you only 'cut the plant off' rather than digging it up, then it'll be back!

I had a blight warning last week for a full Smith Period.
If there is any blight about then it will only be early blight and that causes black spots on the leaf but will not cause the same damage as late blight.

I wonder if your plant has developed blackleg?

Hi Tattie, I wondered where you'd been hiding.  ;D ;D ;D

All my earlies got frost nipped and I am in sunny SE London.  I was away and didn't know about the frosts so my first thought was Aminopyralid!!! Eeek!!  Soon calmed down after talking to my fellow allotmenteers...

The chap on the next plot to me thought he had blight well its a bit early for blight. Turned out to be frost damage