Potatoes, Growing Your Own, time to take a peak at my first early potaotes, to see how they are progressing.

A strange thing about the potatoes, that I am growing this year.  There was no sign of flowers on my first early potatoes this year.

Recently the foliage just wilted back on the potatoes and then turned yellow, next the leaves and stem of the plant collapsed and then they turned into a pathetic looking shriveled crisp brown remnant of their former self.

I checked if anyone else on the allotment plots nearby thought they had blight, I asked the people with the most growing experience what they thought was happening to the potato plants this year. Now after last years crop of potatoes being much reduced in size,quantity and quality, you will understand that I did not begin to inspect the potato patch without some feelings of 'misgivings' that I was going to uncover a problem. There was then a surprise in store for me when I discovered a good supply of healthy potatoes, sitting not far below the surface of the soil. Well that is where they were, now they are in my kitchen awaiting my culinary efforts tomorrow or on Sunday. If the potatoes taste as good as they look then we are in for a treat, whatever I decided to serve them up with.

My New Potatoes - good to discover they look good as well as taste good.

I am pleased that the potatoes we are digging up for meals are really good so far this year  (we are doing this as and when we want them, a couple of days worth for meals at a time).

The potatoes (a first early variety) are proving to be not only tasty in the way only home grown potatoes are but also free from marks and blemishes. I think this may be due to the improvement we have made to the soil and other steps we have taken.

Wire worm were a problem we had a couple of years ago. You could still eat the potatoes we had grown, but they were not as attractive looking as they might have been when you harvested them. It also meant a little bit longer prep time before cooking them. Wire worm are more likely to be a  problem when you grow potatoes in an area that was previously un-worked and grassy. This means it is less likely in future years but you can try growing the green manure seeds -(mustard) in an area where you plan to grow potatoes.

Ways to prevent potato problems in own grown potatoes in future.

One of the things I did to reduce the risk of wire worm in the future was to sow green manure seeds of a type that are supposed to help deal with wire worm problems. I did this in the area that I would be using to plant potatoes in future.

• I grow by organic principles so the green manure sowing fitted with my ideas of dealing with problems in a natural way. 

• I also use the principles of crop rotation and leave the correct gap of time before replanting the same crop in an area.
• You can buy a varieties of seed potatoes that are resistant to the problems you have suffered from. These are things like a resistance to scab resistance. 
• Grow good quality seed potatoes, do not plant supermarket spuds sold for meals.

If you are worried about blight in potatoes and want to read up on what it is and what you can do about it here is a link to a page about it from a reliable source - Late Blight Advice.

The page also has a list of the names of blight resistant varieties of seed potatoes. 

It is a company that sells seeds and seed potatoes in the UK.