Blighted Potatoes

I cut the tops off my maincrop spuds when everything else was dropping with the blight & left most of them in the ground.

They were mulched with wood chips from a joinery workshop.

Cleared the snow off one plant today, the top few inches of wood chip were frozen, but underneath there were enough big spuds to feed us all in the form of paprika/olive oil roasts:gnthb:

Only problem was some slug damage. Anyone else had problems with underground slugs this year ? I assume its the little black ones. Are there any organic solutions other than underground hedgehogs ?

 

Hi Ziggy,

Had almost zero blight on the pratties this year, just some with rings inside once cut!

But don't mention slug (keel) damage, I think it is because I use so much stable manure, that the blighters prosper.

Cheers!

:skp:

 

No Damage on the parsnips yet, covered the remaining ones with sheets of stuff so I can get some out for christmas, and the jerusalem artichokes that are still in the ground.

Probably another sack load of spuds still in the ground John, the wood chip layer above them is about 6" so they are well protected from the frost. Some of the same crop that I lifted earlier & brought indoors are starting to sprout but the ones in the ground are fine.

Ahh, stable manure Makka, that could be the problem here too. I had no soil so I was making it up out of anything I could get hold of, stable manure was a large percentage.

 

I tried using wood chips as a mulch a few years ago Ziggy.
Scrape it off once you have finished with it and get shot of it.

It ruins the soil in my opinion, and robs the nitrogen if dug in.

 

Yeah, I had thought about the nitrogen robbery pete. It'll probably get shuffled around as a mulch till its rotten. If it rots before it gets dug in should be ok.

Either that or pile it up & treat it like leafmold i suppose, let the fungus get into it.

Going off track a bit, I was in the deli with a mate when he saw a small bag of dried morel fungus for £10, he was cussing as loads of them had come up in his bark mulch & he didn't know what they were & let them go over.

 

I'm searching for trials now John, but i'll put them in the other thread, to keep the varieties together.

I only got this one going to show cutting the blighted tops off before it took proper hold has worked this time.:thmb: