Looking around the allotments at Minnowburn it's clear we are stereotypical (N) Irish men and woman. Spud munchers! Everyone likes a spud whether it be a nice "dry" spud or a waxy 'spud'. Who doesn't like chips or mash, wedges or roasties?
The spud is generally easy to grow. You just stick it in the ground and one tuber with a small amount of TLC will give you a return of 10 - 15 tubers. That is unless the dreaded blight has struck. 'Blight' is a word lodged within our national vocabulary. Blight is an air borne fungal disease which thrives in the weather conditions we have been stuck with this summer. Humid, wet and warm. The first signs of potato blight are dark spots appearing on the leaves of the potato plant. It will travel down the mid rib (mid part of the leaf) and then enter the stem of the plant before travelling down and infecting the tubers growing happily underground. Once this happens the blight will turn the solid firm spud into a smelly wet mush. In effect ruining your harvest.
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| Early stages of blight - time to take action |
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| Leaves removed completely to prevent spread to tubers |
There are a few things you can do to prevent blight on your spud crop. It depends whether you want to grow organically or not. First thing is to keep a good eye out for blight. You don't really need to worry until July at the earliest. If you see the tell tale dark spots on the leaves cut them off and remove them from the plant. If you have missed the chance to do that and your plants are clearly infested what you can do is cut the entire plant back ie. cut all the foliage off right down at ground level and get rid of it (preferably in your brown bin- not the compost heap). If you get there in time you will be able to prevent the blight travelling down and infecting your spuds underground. You can leave them in the ground and use them as you need them or after approx 3 weeks you can dig them for storage and put them in a Hessian sack. By this time they will have developed a nice thick skin that will make them ideal for storage.
If you want to use chemicals you can spray with Bordeaux mix. This is based on copper sulphate and really is not something I would recommend, but each to their own.
If you want to avoid blight entirely you can concentrate on growing early varieties. There are also some good blight resistant ( much more resistant than most) varieties. These include Sarpo Mira and other Sarpo varieties.
Check out the short 5 min' video on growing spuds at: http://www.giyireland.com/videos/detail/potatoes
Also a really great project that is worth checking out is http://www.spuds.ie/
Mick MCA
