Sallygarden Smallholding - The Forum For Sustainable Living

I have 2 raised beds of potato's and almost all plants are showing signs of blight (brown spotted leaves), am I doomed?
First earlies are Orla Organics (RHS reckons Orla's are somewhat blight resistant!) and second earlies are Maris Peer.
Should I have been spraying with "Burgundy Mixture" or something else? Obviously I wasn't
I had foolishly thought that the raised beds would somehow protect me from the dreaded blight, free draining soil and therefore not damp conditions?

How did your tatties fair up? Ours are still ok, no spraying. Our approach is to get them in early, around Paddies day, then when blight strikes spuds are big enough already. If blight comes we cut off foliage down to ground level and remove it, leave the plot for 2 weeks then harvest spuds all at once to storage or dig up as required.

What I originally thought was blight, I later put down to soil deficiency [lorry load of soil was bought in to fill my raised beds - will add horse manure over winter to rectify this!].

The plants didn't grow too much at all over the last few months so I didnt hold out much hope for an abundance of floury tatties.

However, we are eating the orla's at the moment most nights and they are fantastic.

Every 2nd or 3rd plant has 1 completely rotten tuber (and I mean just black gloop!). Thing is that the rest of the crop are fine! Small in number yes, but not as bad as I had feared.

So i'm back to thinking its blight combined with soil deficiency?, but hope that with horse manure added to all my beds that i'll fair better next year

Hi Paulsie,

We have had the same experience with "Orla". Our crop looked doomed with the blight so we removed the worsed affected leaves and burned them (2 weeks ago) I dug a few up 2 days ago and we were surprised at the amount of healthy tubers, although like yourselves, there is a mushy one every so often. The flavour is very good, and we found the texture firm. Will take your advice and add plenty manure for next year and note any changes to the crop.
Have you tried the old "fir apple"spud? we are planting them next year.

Morag

We got blight about a week ago. To save the crop we cut off foliage at the base of the plant, leave spuds in the ground for 2 weeks (unless eating them immediately) and then dig em all up and store. If stored in stacked cardboard boxes, 1 layer deep, its easy to check them every couple of weeks to discard any blighted one.
I like to plant lots of earlies because they tend to mature and give a good crop before the blight strikes.