Sunday 22 June 2014

Blighted New Potatoes

Friday and Saturday were both pleasant June days with reasonable amounts of sunshine and continuing mild and dry.

Saturday was taken up with a visit to the Esk Valley in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park but more of that another day once the photo’s and video are developed.

I haven't yet come to terms with our potatoes succumbing to blight in June. That initial panic of we aren’t going to have any potatoes at all this year is beginning to dispel a little.

Sue’s posting on her blog gives more details of blight and our problems this year. Having decided it was best to remove the infected foliage on Friday it left some of our potatoes without tops at all. It seemed like a good idea to dig a root of foliageless Winston potatoes to see if we did have any potatoes underneath. They haven’t flowered yet so I wasn't really that hopeful but I couldn't help thinking about those volunteers that get left often have a few usable size potatoes on. 
These are the potatoes from the root of Winston. They weighed in at 0.5kg so not too bad and better than nothing at all. They cleaned up very well too.
Given a good washing under the tap the skins started to come away without any scraping at all. Most surprisingly there was no sign of slug damage and slugs normally find Winston one of my tastiest varieties. Perhaps the slugs have been too busy eating the above ground greenery to bother with the underground stuff. Well they’re missing a treat as these few new potatoes tasted superb eaten with our salad.

If it hadn't been for the blight we wouldn't have dug any potatoes for a few weeks so we'd have missed out on this tasty treat. I still can't really come to think of blight having a silver lining though.  

8 comments:

  1. They look delicious. Some of my potatoes are flowering, I think I might have a rummage round to see if there's anything there to harvest yet, I can't resist.

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    1. I think you'll find some nice little gems when you have a rummage.

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  2. still rotten luck to have had blight so early in the year

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    Replies
    1. I keep having a look at other plotters potatoes but I can't see any signs of blight on them at all. very strange!

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  3. Shame about the blight. Potatoes look good though.

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  4. The potatoes looks so good and fresh! I never seen a fresh potatoes before!

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    Replies
    1. Wow - I can't image summer without fresh or new potatoes. They're the best tasting potatoes of the year.

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