We discovered that two of our potato types - Kestrel and Charlotte had what looked suspiciously like blight beginning to form, with one plant already succumbed. This caused us issue as we hadn't intended to dig up all these potatoes in one go - storage and/or eating issues! But never fear Farm Guy's Dad is here. He is a potato king and said we should can just pull up the plants, collect the potatoes that come up with the stalks and leave the rest in the ground, just dig them as we need them! Hurrah!So out to the garden I went and began pulling. The Charlotte potatoes were very obliging and left all but four of their potatoes nicely hidden below the surface. However, the Kestrel were having none of it and choose to bring up several potatoes each time. I could have buried them again but they were in a bad way so inside they came. The plants will be burned to stop the disease spreading and the potato patch will be rotated (as was the plan anyway) to try and get rid of it.
It seems that Kestrel is not the potato type for us up here. Not only was it the first to suffer with the blight, probably passing it on to the Charlotte who were next door. But it is also suffering from Potato Scab and the munchings of at least two different beasties! It is however a very pretty potato! I shall probably go out later and dig up the rest, no point leaving them down there for a bugs supper!! We will just have to eat a lot of Kestrel potatoes in the near future as with their spoiled skins they won't store well.
The ones that came up today amounted to just over 3 kg(6.6lbs) - I'll let you know what that reaches once the others have been exhumed!
good to know that if your potatoes have blight you don't have to dig them all. I have never grown either of these varieties before so I don't know if blight is common with them but in the past I have had great success and no disease or bug problems with Rockets, Maris Peer and Charlotte and they all produce a good yield so some you could think of for next year.
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