Blight it is!

The disease affecting the potatoes rapidly spread to the entire crop and the allotment next door. Every plant lost it's leaves and within a few days all that remained were sad looking spiky brown stems. The attack now appears to be spreading to other plots on the allotment and will mean a very poor year for potatoes. 


I have been in contact with the Potato Council and had advice. I removed and bagged all the tops down to ground level, then 3 days later lifted the entire crop and left to air dry before putting into hessian sacks. We ended up with around 50Kg of quite small but fairly nice looking potatoes of various varieties. I reckon this would have been more like 200Kg if they gad fully matured. I am now monitoring these the check for signs of rot in storage. 


The Blight is apparently largely down to the climate we have had over the past few weeks. Frequent rain so the leaves rarely dry out combined with humid and warmish conditions. The perfect combination for Late Blight.


I have enrolled as a monitor for for the Potato Council Blight Watch Scheme and have submitted samples of the foliage and stems for lab analysis. They keep interactive online maps of where attacks are occurring: http://www.potato.org.uk/node/910


The service provides SMS alerts when there is an elevated chance of blight in members area and enables them to take preventative measures including spraying with Copper Sulphate based fungicide. This is only effective if applied before attack and is not a cure unfortunately.


Information can be had from the Councils Website: http://www.potato.org.uk/gardenblight 


A few pictures of the plots after clearance and the crop below:

However happily all the other crops on the allotment continue to flourish!

1st crop

After a week away, we went down to see how things were going. During the week away, some of the potato strains had been attacked and were showing wilting, "burned" brown foliage. We decided to take up a root or two to see what was happening underground. If anyone recognises this we would be keen to hear what it may be.

"burned" looking effect on leaves

Only affecting 2 of the varieties we planted so far - very odd!

Different varieties were obviously more resistant

However, the affected potatoes actually had very nice clean new potatoes underground. Which we thoroughly enjoyed that evening. So nice to have our first reward after all the effort.

Tommy Toms!

We had a few tomato plants left over from the greenhouse at home so I put them in the allotment.

And a lid for the water butt....

A break in the rain at last

It has rained and rained for days preventing any real progress but today a few hours respite and I set up a compost cage and did a massive amount of weeding.


First the compost frame... I turned an old pallet into a compost frame. Cutting the pallet diagonally to form the sides. and using the slats on the other side to build a back. It only needs a tarpaulin cover now. I had so many weeds it was put to good use immediately.

And a few hours of hands and knees left me with nice clean plots, the weeds had grown incredibly in the last two weeks with all the rain.

Everything is really on the move

Some pics today of progress and growth bursting out everywhere.
Sorry, too hot to type captions but the photos are pretty self explanatory I hope.

A nice day at last

Today it was fine, sunny and warm so we took advantage to get on with the planting. As a result, the centre bed is now fully set and the final bed progressed further. As well as the potatoes which are growing at a fantastic pace with beautiful green tops we now have, onions, french beans, borlotti beans, broad beans, peas, beetroot, leeks, carrots, parsnips, chard, cabbage, cauliflower, squash and cucumber. We hope they all go as well as the potatoes have.

Wet...Wet...Wet

It has been hard to get on the allotment for the past week or two, plus working away has not helped. However a little better weather has led to some progress. I am somewhat amazed at the growth shown by the potatoes. I put this down to a combination of very fertile soil following 20 years of wilderness and the sheer amount of rain into the ground....

Today I managed to put in 2 rows of dwarf beans.

Then dig some of the last bed and plant 3 butternut squashes and a row of 2 types of cucumber.

Finally it was on to hands and knees to take out the rapid weed growth in the onion bed.