Soggy Potatoes

[FEUTTY]

Some of my maincrop potatoes are going rotten& have died off. Has anyone else had this problem. I think it is because they have been very wet, soil will have to be built up for next year.

[rustylady]

Do you mean the foliage or the tubers? Soggy rotten foliage usually means blight has struck, but if you remove and burn or bin the foliage you may still be able to dig and use the potatoes. Good luck.

[Gardeners Delight]

Mine are the same rotten potatoes as well as foliage gave in and dug what was left up today thro the puddles only 2lbs at the mostNow my 2nd earlies look as if they are going the same way but the pink fir apples seem to be surviving. Also had to pull my onions up as they were starting to rot in the ground.

[Sebbster]

Not even looked at my mains yet...
Sorry for those that have problems, mine will remain underground for a while yet

If the plants are dying off, that's a good sign will be ready for lifting once died down, although still early for mains...

[Darwin]

Sorry to hear about the spuds

Yep you are not alone mine have fallen to the dredded blight

[clareg]

Sorry to hear about your spud problems. I think mine might have blight too, but would value any opinions. Three weeks ago the entire allotment was flooded, the second earlies I have dug up since where fine. But I have inspected my main crop and they don't look so good.

At the beginning of the month the main crop flowered so I would expect them to start dying off now, but there are brown splodges on the leaves and on the underside there is a faint trace of white around the edges of the brown spot. Sorry not got a photo yet, but I dug up one of the spuds (Desiree) and 2 out of the five had the damage you can see in the attached photos.

Could it be blight or just water damage?

Clareg

[roitelet]

Looks like blight to me. Clareg. Use them quick, cutting off the rotten bits.

Better luck and weather next year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[jondanie]

Clareg,
Classic blight symptoms.certainly from your leaf descriptions. The pics you attached looks more like slug damage but i'm sure you would recognise slug damage if you saw it. A little bit early for tuber blight right now, but it's not a normal year!!

Do as roitelet suggests, use them up asap

[poozie]

Don't talk to me about blight! The whole of allotment site got hit about a month ago and everyone lost their crop. Earlies and blight resistant ones survived. You MUST burn all foilage and affected tubers. It is thought that our blight came from a plot with a heap of abandoned potatoes left on it. Some guy last year grew nothing but spuds but no one has seen him this year. I was told by my husbands Aunty Sandra (a Fenlander) that eating blight attacked spuds makes you very poorly.

[clareg]

Feutty, if your potatoes look anything like the attached photos then there is a great probability you have potato blight. I went to my allotment tonight with some photos from the web and mine have blight. Spoke to a couple of other allotmenteers and they have it to, so it looks like most of our allotments are infected.

I cut down as much as the foliage as I could in the vain hope of saving the spuds. Dug up one of the Kerr's Pink variety, the potatoes where very small but not infected. I am hoping I have caught it earlier enough to save some of the spuds as there was no sign of blight on the 7th July, the week after, it was there!

Clareg

[bubblewrap]

All my potatoe tops have died off & I am having to dig them up, tubers are sound but the yield is poor. I had about 140 plants but I will only get about 2-3 Bags I expected about 6. Still other crops are going well.

[jondanie]

Clareg,
Kerr's Pinks are a real disaster when it comes to blight. They're a very old variety and one of the most blight susceptible varieties known! In most years, it's almost impossible to keep blight out of them, never mind this years washout!

[moggssue]

I have just one leaf looking exactly like clareg's photo amongst the forest of potato leaves (which are also next to my tomatoes, currently looking healthy) - I pulled it off and destroyed it, what else do I need to do? Should I dig up the potatoes just in case (they might be maris piper and were planted in containers the first week in May). Do you think my tomatoes will be okay or will it just spread? A rather worried grape