Early blight and potatoes

[mom2cassie]

So I have a set of potato plants that, based on my research, have early blight. However, it is only affecting the plants in one of my potato bags that I've set up -- there are two others that are just fine. (I'm guessing that one of my certified seed potatoes wasn't so disease free )

But this brings up a question. What to do with this bag? Can I just treat the Early Blight or do I need to just dump the bag now? It was definitely in the early stages. There were only one or two branches that had gone mostly yellow with spots. The rest of the spots are scattered throughout a bunch of lower branches, but the rest of the plant is just fine. I can treat the leaves, but I'm worried about the potatoes.

I don't know if it makes a difference, but if I do treat, I plan on trying the milk treatment mentioned elsewhere...

Oh, and if I do need to dump the bag... are the new potatoes in it edible? (if they look healthy, of course).

Thanks so much!l

[mom2cassie]

Any thoughts -- please? I would like to keep them going, if possible. I'm ok w/ doing work for a chance at success. But I don't want to keep doing tons of work, only to discover down the road they were doomed from the start!

Ah well. Either way, at least it is practice at combating early blight before it hits something more critical, like my tomatoes!

TIA

[cynthia_h]

The subject of "blight" pretty much consumed the forum last summer, when the Big Box stores in the eastern half of the country all sold tomato seedlings from the same source, and these seedlings were all infected with blight.

The experienced members of the forum gave MUCH advice on blight: how to deal with it, how to spot it, what it is (and isn't), etc. That information is still here.

The same organism can attack tomatoes as well as potatoes b/c they're so closely related.

I just did a search of the forum on "blight tomatoes" and found all those discussions from last year, as well as some (but not so detailed) from this year.

Cornell University was very helpful in disseminating scientific information about blight and providing photographs last year; those may still be on their website.

If I have time later today, I'll dig up the Cornell url, but it's probably in the search.

Sorry....

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[mom2cassie]

I'm sorry -- I did look through the forum for "early blight potato" and did look at cornell as well. I didn't find anything explicit here about what happens to the potatoes themselves... maybe I'm doing something wrong on the search or just missing something obvious? I've definitely been known to do that!

I would look under tomato as well, but was concerned that there were differences in the way potatoes were affected since I obviously can't spray them.

I did look on Cornell as well. This was the most helpful link: https://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/factsheets/Potato_EarlyBlt.htm. But there seemed to be contradicting information there. At one point, they say that plants should be harvested dry, but at another point, they say that infected potatoes will be corky and inedible. Are they assuming that this is a field of potatoes, and someone won't be ripping out a few infected plants in fear of sacrificing other plants and potatoes (a logical assumption)?

I know -- I'm probably making this more complicated than it has to be! LOL I will definitely say that my confusion is based on lack of experience. I'm still very new to this, so if I'm missing something obvious, forgive me! There is still a huge learning curve!

Does that help any?

[applestar]

I don't know about Early Blight, that's why I hadn't spoken up before.... I think I've had the Late Blight on my potatoes before. Brown and black streaks form on the leaf stems from the infected leaves and eventually work their way down the main stems. At the time, I found out that the potatoes will be OK as long as I harvest them before the streaks reach the potatoes underground.

The harvested potatoes shouldn't be used as seed potatoes, but are visually unaffected and are safe to eat -- and may I add, certainly safer than if you sprayed all kinds of chemicals trying to halt the disease

[mom2cassie]

Thank you so much! That does help. Since early blight is considered a less invasive disease, I'd take that as a good sign. And trust me, I had no intention of using any chemicals to slow/stop the blight. The strongest thing I planned on using is milk. If it needs anything beyond that, I'd just harvest. I agree -- I'd much rather smaller potatoes that are not full of nasty chemicals... much tastier!

Thank you again!

[gixxerific]

Sorry to hear about your problem I believe I have the same thing going on here. All my potatoes are going south and fast.

Can't really say much more than that. But good luck I will be digging up more tomorrow because of this.

[rainbowgardener]

My first year for growing potatoes too. After getting off to a great start, they are also now not doing well at all. I've also been thinking it might be early blight on mine, not quite sure though. I haven't dug any because they never flowered, I was waiting to see flowers. Now I don't know if they will, but I'm going to wait a bit anyway, see if now that the sun has come out for a little bit, I can rescue them.

[mom2cassie]

Well, I have definitely gotten flowers on two of my bags, including the infected one. The third bag is fingerling potatoes (I think...). I'm actually surprised they haven't gotten any flowers yet really, b/c I thought these were an early variety (I got one of each type of potato -- an early, a mid, and a late). Of course, at one point my dh moved the potato bags so he might have mixed them up and I'm completely wrong as to which is which! We'll see what happens.

I like the tops of the potatoes, they really are lovely. And my daughter is loving that she has one set of plants where she can pick the flowers off with abandon! But not being able to see the progress of your harvest is a bit a learning experience! LOL

The good news -- I don't see any significant spread of the disease since the milk treatment the other day. Of course, that's only been a few days. I'm going to try and give it another good dousing maybe tomorrow, since we got a bit of rain last night. It might be a good idea to try for your potatoes? It can't hurt! I did a 3:1 ratio of water to milk.