Potato Damage - Wireworm Perhaps?

Saturday was a lovely summer’s day, a bit of a rarity this year. Some good sunny spells and the temperature rose into the mid twenties.

On the plot I decided to lift some more potatoes probably not the best choice of job on a warm summer’s afternoon. The potatoes were in one of last year’s old strawberry beds and the predominant variety planted was Juliette with a few Winston’s planted to completely fill up the bed. I lifted the Juliette’s first and these had a decent crop of small to medium size tubers which were virtually free of any pest damage with no rotting from the wet weather. I was pleased with this crop which weighed in at 17.2kg or 37½ lbs.

There were just five roots of Winston to lift. These were all medium to very large potatoes but nearly all the potatoes had a few small holes in them, damage that I suspect was caused by wireworm. Below is a close up shot of the holes in the Winston potatoes.

What ever it was that caused this damage loved our Winston potatoes but left Juliette alone even though they were growing alongside each other in this bed. The vast majority of the Winston’s will be fine to use as even with the damaged parts of the tuber removed it will still leave plenty of useable potato. Well that’s what I’m hoping! They will of course have to be used first as damaged potatoes don’t store well.