We set off for the plot to plant out our sweet corn on another cloudy and dry day.
I didn't even bother having a quick look around the plot as I normally do just getting straight on with the task of covering the bed tilled on Monday with weed control fabric and barrowing over some rather “fresh” horse manure to hold down the edges. I’m sure it will be okay to dig this in next spring to improve the soil.
As it turned out I was a little bit premature thinking the sweet corn was ready to plant out as the roots hadn’t yet filled out the pots and transplanting wasn't going to be so easy. We decided to leave the plants to grow on for a few days before having another attempt to plant them out.
So we decided it was coffee time. I collected the kettle from the shed and headed down the path to the tap. As I passed our early potatoes Rocket and Casablanca I had to do a double take. I didn’t believe what I could see. Never mind the coffee for the moment this was far more serious.
I'm pretty sure that our potatoes have “early blight”. It’s not something we've suffered from for a few years now but when our potatoes have had it in the past it’s started in early August not in the middle of June. If all our potatoes succumb now I doubt we’ll have much of a crop.
The most common advice is to remove the foliage to stop the blight spores falling onto the soil and then infecting the potatoes underneath. Apart from our Rocket and Casablanca varieties which are just coming into flower our second earlies won’t have potatoes forming yet as they aren’t anywhere near the flowering stage.
Will it affect all our potato crop and will find our tomatoes in the greenhouse and coldframe? Will the weed control fabric that some of the affected potatoes are growing through offer some protection to any tubers that have formed?
Now all we can do is wait and see what happens.
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does anybody spray with a bordeaux mixture these days?
ReplyDeleteI don't. I did years ago now and it didn't make the slightest bit of difference.
DeleteOh that's really frustrating. I do hope it doesn't spread too much, but I know these things tend to take hold a bit sometimes. I picked off all of my peach leaf curl leaves this year, and I though the whole tree would gradually be covered, but fingers crossed, and to my astonishment, it seems fine. I hope it's the same with your potatoes.
ReplyDeleteWe've had peach leaf curl too this year and our plum trees suffered a bad aphid attack. Good healthy green foliage is at a premium for us this year!
DeleteOh I forgot the slugs are helping themselves to anything that's left.
Oh dear, it certainly looks like blight. I hope you can manage to control it but it doesn't bode well being discovered so early in the season. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.
ReplyDeletePerhaps if it stays dry it might slow down the spread.
DeleteOh No! That is certainly a disaster at this early stage. I must go and inspect my own crop now...
ReplyDeleteIf only someone would invent a remedy for this ghastly disease...
If they did it wouldn't be available to gardeners. We're too dangerous to be let loose with chemicals.
Delete2 years ago we had it on our allotments, I sprayed with bordeaux & was the only one unaffected so yes it does help. remove the infected leaves at least. it is very humid at the moment which isn't helping
ReplyDelete