May of made a drastic error yesterday and chopped all the foliage off my largest potato . . . said potato has been getting alot of black spots on the foliage over the past week or two, and a fair bit of it turned yellow and started to die. So foolishly (without consulting the stew first) i read a book and came to the conclusion i had blight . . . the book advised me to take off all the foliage and wait 3 weeks before harvesting the spuds. now further research has got me thinking it could of been a magnesium deficiency??? aaaarrrgghh!!!! i felt around in the soil before chopping the foliage and i do have some decent size potatoes in there for harvesting, if there any good or not, i don't know. not really sure what to do now as my other 2 plants do have the odd spotty leaf, which i've removed . . . so no photographic evidence to show at this time . . . . . what should i do??? :-?
If your plants started to die back, chances are its because the potatoes are ready to eat. Thats how you know to dig them. That would happen about 4 to 6 weeks after they bloom but weather can make that timeline variable. If you have potatoes, eat them! There is nothing harmful to humans even if the plants show signs of blight. If blight has affected the potatoes there will be brown, dry, pithy spots on them. Will not look good and may have an off taste. Since the blight fungus does not affect humans and can be present on many seed potatoes, its a possibility, but if your plant has spuds go ahead and dig them and enjoy new potatoes. Its something we just have to deal with if we want to grow them.
thanks again mart, think you helped me last time with these spuds. i haven't seen any flowers at all :-? the spuds are there but no flowers ???
Thats odd ! But I dig new potatoes whenever they are golf ball size and up flowers or not. I had a few this year that didn`t flower but still had potatoes. Didn`t pay much attention to that. Just ate the potatoes.
