[Lius]

Thanks for all the help guy's.

As I said I sprayed the foliage with Dithane last week, the situation seems stable i.e. not spreading and no sign of plants dying.

I saw this on the web:-
http://potatohealth.cas.psu.edu/data/Potato%20Disease.pdf
go to page 26 picture 65 Ozone Injury, this looks very like what is on the leaves, what do you think?

[ian]

that is a good link Lius, thanks for that. I dug up all my earlies yesterday blight affected, leaf curl yellowing and mottled black spots nothing on stalks and no signs of spores underneath, sprayed main crop which appear unaffected so far, the potatoes were marble size, and had a hundred or so white nodules on the could these have been spores?
Between this and the onions gone to seed before there even and sign of bulbs forming, the cabbage and kohl rabi runnning wild, it is so far been a tough year.

what next? a plague of locust i suspect!

[Lius]

Hi Ian,

My Cabbage, bulb onions, carrots, lettuce & mangtout are all doing great.

My spring onions never took off, they are tiny.

My spinnach looks like something from a horror movie, all scorched and wrinkled-up like it's in pain, I'll post a photo later maybe someone will have a tip. I even planted a later row of a different viriety of spinnach and it's going the same way as the firse. The whole garden got the same dose of Growmore before planting and is all watered the same.

[Fiachra]

I have noticed small dark brown spots on the foliage of a few kerrs pinks.(a bit like the Lius's picture but smaller and fewer spots) there is no mould and the leaves are healthy looking otherwise.The sarpos right beside them are fine as are the queens in a different part of the garden.I did not spray for blight last week as I am trying to avoid chemicals as much as possible I thought I would be safe as my garden is very exposed and always seems to have a breeze even on hot days.I have cut off the affected leaves but am wondering should I sacrifice the whole plant.Maybe I am just panicking.10.00pm on a Saturday night in the garden - I think I have become obsessed!

[Lius]

Since spraying all the potatoes I have done nothing to the first early potatoes with the brown spots (photo’s) which then went yellow / dying. I dug 3 plants of these today and they look great 1.4kg about 20 tubers wide range of size from 20mm up to 80mm diameter. I think this salad variety (NICOLA) just finish early and the foliage dies-off naturally and/or doesn’t like the hot sun we are getting now, they never flowered. I planted them on 28th March (3 months ago) but there was very little growing the first few weeks. Whatever happened to the NICOLA has not affected my other potatoes crops.

I planted a bigger variety of first earlies (PENTLAND JAVELIN) beside the NICOLA on 28th March and they flowered, they did not get brown spots / damage and still look fine. I won’t dig these until the NICOLA are all used-up. I planted 2nd earlies (MARIS PEER) on 12th May bedside the NICOLA and they are looking great too with lovely bright purple flowers now. I really don't want to spray again, what do you guy's think?

My onions (STUTTGARTER GIANT) started to bolt so I pulled them prematurely, cut-off the greens and left them to dry but the seed shoots are starting to grow again so I'll have to use them up quickly. They are only 40mm diameter but tasty. The man tout, cabbage, carrots & lettuce all doing great giving plenty to eat at the moment, however everything was slow to get started due to the April weather.

Otherwise I’m very happy so far with my return to vegetable gardening after a 30 year break.