Hi Tiny Gardener here….If you’ve been following me over the past couple of months you will know that I planted some ‘Jazzy’ New Potatoes into a large pot back in late March.
About 7-10 days ago (late June), I noticed some small black spots appearing on the leaves. It was such a shame as the plants were looking super healthy until that point.
As it was only affecting a few of the leaves, I decided to remove those to see if it could just be a lack of space or light that was causing the issue. But not long after this, the black spots started to spread and the leaves turned yellow. The potato plants had caught the dreaded ‘Blight’.
My initial fear was that I would lose the whole crop, however I learnt that I might be able to save the tubers by acting fast and removing the rest of the foliage. I cut the plants off at the base, got rid of the foliage, and left the potatoes in the soil for another week. Apparently, this helps to harden the skin of any that are still growing.
When I harvested the potatoes a week later, I pulled all the remaining short stalks out of the soil and rootled around in the soil, not sure what I was going to find. To my surprise, there were lots and lots of seemingly healthy baby new potatoes. Some were tiny but most were of a good size for a salad potato. All in all, it was a pretty decent harvest, in spite of blight.
I mentioned this to Rocket Gardens’ Seasoned Grower who said that her potato plants had gone the same way in the last couple of weeks. As she was away, she was unable to remove the foliage until she returned from her holiday. The stalks and leaves had completely blackened by then. Amazingly, she dug up all the plants and only a very few of the tubers had been affected, so she got an okay crop too. I guess plants sometimes prove to be a little more resilient than we expect!