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  • From: Pam Twin Oaks <pam AT twinoaks.org>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Looks like Late Blight but
  • Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 22:14:54 -0400

 John Ferree said:

" thought we had late blight 5 weeks ago. . . got hammered last year. .
. sent in samples to pathology at purdue. . . severe case of early
blight and septoria leaf spot.  With all the rain of the previous weeks
(we're now drier than hell). . . and the high relative humidity. . .
it's no wonder the spores are going crazy.  But I was almost positive we
had LBlight until the test came back."

A similar thing happened to us. We were fairly sure we had Late Blight - dark leaf lesions starting near the top of the plant. No haloes like Early Blight has. Not pin spots starting at the bottom like Septoria (which i am well familiar with).

The report from the Virginia Extension said EB, Septoria and aphids, no LB. Meanwhile we had been picking off and bagging affected leaves (yes, it did take a lot of time). Then the plants recovered, though not to a high-yielding state. Well, we had taken leaves off, so we can't expect miracles! I fully expected the plants to die.

Meanwhile, the potatoes which we harvested in mid July started to rot. We sorted and saved some, but the rot moved faster than we did! So today we took a truckful to the compost pile. It was mostly a soft bacterial rot, very smelly. There were patches of reddish-brown on the skins of some. Not raised or sunken. I wondered if that was LB too, and we didn't notice because it was time for the potato vines to die anyway. I wondered if the LB started the trouble, then the bacterial rot followed. My other "wonderment" was if the potatoes cooked in the ground in the 2 weeks after we mowed the weeds and vines, before we harvested. Those were a very hot two weeks.

Anyone have thoughts about this? Potatoes cooking in hot soil, LB, other potato rots?

Pam, Twin Oaks Community, Louisa, VA zone 7



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