Scorched by Blight

15th June
New Chicks On The Block
Bang on time the first three chicks hatched out in the incubator. Tomorrow morning they'll be needing the electric hen to keep them warm. This means that the previous batch of chicks, now nearly four weeks old, need to move out.
With this in mind, much of today was spent cleaning out and reorganising the stables. The turkeys have a new perch which they have instantly taken to.
For the Ixworth chicks I've set up a broody ring - basically a long piece of very expensive Correx formed into a circle and held together with some very expensive cheap bulldog clips. I've constructed a lid out of spare bits of wood and mesh, this to deter vermin. Heat will be supplied from a heat lamp suspended from the joists, though at the moment I rather suspect the chicks would be absolutely fine without this. They've been going outside during the day for a while now.

16th June

New Accommodation for All
At the last count we were up to 13 chicks. Most of them have dried and fluffed up now. They can survive about the first 24 hours on goodness supplied from their egg, but after that they need to come out of the incubator and into controlled housing with heat, food and water.
There was a big change this evening for the previous generation of chicks too, who found themselves in a rather cosy stable under a heat lamp.

They have much more space there, but more importantly they won't be stinking out the entrance hall to the house any more. So far everything seems to be going very well.



In fact it was all change for everyone today. The sheep have moved paddocks to fresh grass and are revelling in finding new patches of clover and young sowthistle leaves. They will stay in this section for a week or more before moving on. This method of strip grazing keeps the grass fresher and helps with worm control.



Blighted
Final job of the day was a somewhat depressing one. Despite there being no Smith period or near miss in the last two weeks, blight has swept through the potatoes in the last couple of days. There is no choice but to cut off the tops to try to prevent it getting into the tubers. Of course, some of the later variety may not have had enough time to develop any decent size tubers, so last year's bumper crop of Pink Fir Apples will definitely not be repeated. The First and Second Earlies seem to have swelled nicely though. I guess the rain is a double-edged sword.

17th July

Chilly chicks, cold eggs and thawing freezers
Woken up at 6 o'clock to be told by Sue that half the house had no electricity. If she had said that all the electricity had failed I would not have been concerned for power cuts are pretty much the norm here. But this was different. We still had lights downstairs but not upstairs. Anything plugged in wasn't working either - the freezers, the incubator, the electric broody.

On investigation the switched had tripped, but it just wouldn't flick back on. Fortunately the electrics in the garage were still working so I moved the incubator and the electric broody out there. The electric in the stables was working too, but the heat lamp had gone off. It seemed a huge coincidence, but I couldn't really understand how this could affect the house electrics as it had 2 RCD protectors before the trail got anywhere near the house.

It was early Sunday morning. There was no-one we could call at this time and the house had virtually no electricity. We decided to go back to sleep and ring around later on. With no home phone, no internet and poor mobile reception, I was not looking forward to this.

I woke up again at 9.30am! Had it all been a dream?

I headed downstairs and the circuit breaker switch was still in the down position. I tried once more to flick it back up... and it stayed! The kettle came on, the phone beeped back into life, the printer aligned itself and some of the lights came on.

Out in the stable, I unplugged the heat lamp and tried it in another socket, without the extension lead. It worked. I don't really understand what went on overnight, but I've just got my fingers crossed everything stays working. I'm not risking anything though. The chicks are on the move again into the garage where the heat lamp can reach them without needing the extension lead.

The youngest batch of chicks are staying out in the garage too. It's a good set up that we have accidentally hit upon.

After a hectic morning I headed off to a friend's smallholding where the Grow-Your Own group which I coordinate was gathering today. On the menu today were Discussion Subject: My favourite tool/most useless tool. Plant Doctors: Mosaic Virus. Trial Crop: Spanish Black Round Radish. Growing and Cooking with: Berries and Currants.
Sue had kindly made a frozen blackcurrant yogurt and a whitecurrant sorbet for me to take along. The sorbet especially went down a storm on such a hot sunny day.

Here's what blight looks like
One thing I did find out today was that I am just about the last person to have been hit by blight, so I guess I should count my blessings. I was hoping not to have to chop the haulms off the last bed of potatoes, the Desiree and Pink Fir Apple, as there would be little chance these would have developed any decent size tubers yet. But when I inspected closely, blight was taking hold of these too so reluctantly they got the chop.

Potato blight taking hold

Sometimes it is not totally clear whether plants have blight or if it is just that the plants are dying down naturally. However, this year the symptoms are classic and unmistakeable, so I took a few snaps today for you to compare if you ever need.

Once all the growth above ground has been removed, it needs to be moved away since it holds spores which can easily contaminate the soil and are very likely to spread to the tomatoes. Ideally it is burned, but that's easier said than done when it is still green. I put mine into a closed system compost bin and it never sees the light of day again!
As for the potatoes under the soil, they are best left for a couple of weeks, for if they are dug up immediately they will get contaminated by the spores on the soil surface and will rot in storage.

The turkey hen investigates the Ixworth chicks

18th July
Thirsty work
The thermometer hit 30 degrees today. I love the hot weather. Unfortunately I had to be in work to make up for the time lost when my car was broken down last week.
I spent the evening piping water to all the animals and poultry and watering the young plants in pots outside the polytunnel. Everything is thirsty on days like this.
I then mixed up a spray of sodium bicarbonate, just a couple of tablespoons mixed with a gallon of water, a tablespoon of oil and a few drops of soap. This spray was for the tomatoes in the polytunnel as well as anything else which might be affected by fungi, such as the courgette leaves and aubergines. The main reason for this spray is to prevent the tomatoes getting blight and the other plants getting powdery mildew.

19th July
El Scorchio
I woke up late for work after Arthini had twice escaped from his overnight basket, the second time by busting through the wall! A hot night obviously had the dogs sleepless as they woke us up at regular intervals.
The day was definitely el scorchio.
In the evening we finally got to the Thai restaurant in Holbeach. We love Thai food and have been living here almost six years now, but it has inexplicably taken someone's leaving do to get us there. The food was gorgeous and it certainly won't be another six years before we are back.

Spuds

Charlottes and Kestrels laid out to dry.
Boris is helping.

Back in the spring I planted 24 each of 7 varieties of potato. As long as we don't have a disaster, I know that this is plenty enough to last Sue and I for a year and that the last maincrops will see us through until the first earlies come out of the polytunnel

They were:

Earlies
Red Duke of York - an early which is great for chips and roasting.
Arran Pilot - a bulk standard for nice new potatoes. Performs well and seems to stay in the ground well too.

Second Earlies
Charlotte - Another proven performer and so expensive in the shops!
Kestrel - A new variety for me.

Mains
Romano - a descendant of Desiree. I like a red potato and this gives great bakers.
King Edward - a good, honest basic maincrop spud.
Pink Fir Apple - Another 'luxury potato'. If only people knew how easy it is to grow and how nice it tastes. Allegedly prone to blight, as it is very late, but mine are more than ready now and last year, when blight struck early, I got a better crop from this than from many other varieties.

I have pretty much settled on these varieties now, after a few years of experimentation. There is a lot of talk of the blight-free varieties these days, especially with warmer, damper summers. However, the ones I tried tasted pretty insipid, so I won't be converting just yet. I have to admit, in a bad blight year they did come through better than the others. I've found though that if I'm ready for blight and take the tops off before it gets into the plants, that I get a good crop anyway, even when blight comes as early as it did last year.

We have been harvesting the earlies for a good while now, but there are still about half of them left in the ground. One of the Arran Pilots the other day was so big it did for a meal for two of us. It still tasted great though.

The tops have died down on the Second Earlies and I cut them off a couple of weeks ago, so with a dry day yesterday, even verging on sunny, I decided to dig them up. I like to cut off the haulms a couple of weeks before digging potatoes up if I aim to store them, as this gives the skins time to set in the ground. There is no point leaving them in for longer as this just makes them prone to slug damage and rotting in wet ground.

A reasonable crop of Charlottes.
Plenty for the two of us,
plus the geese enjoyed the smaller ones
 and any that didn't pass the quality test.

Digging potatoes is a magical job. You just sink the fork in and lift the soil to reveal clusters of swollen tubers. I dig thoroughly to make sure there are none left in the ground, as any 'volunteers' will grow next year and can harbour diseases through the winter. Some always slip through the net though!
I then leave the spuds on the surface of the soil for a good few hours if I can, before gathering them up and storing them in thick paper bags specially designed for potatoes. Any spudlets or damaged tubers get thrown to the geese who are very appreciative. The best spuds then go into a dark wardrobe in the garage. This keeps them in the dark so they don't turn green. It also keeps them not so warm that they try to sprout but above freezing, for if the frost gets to them in the winter they are ruined.

The potatoes I've dug so far this year are a good size, undoubtedly helped by summer's plentiful rain. The yield is not massive (a bit more sunshine and warmth might have helped) but there will be more than enough for our needs. The cost of a few extra tubers is minimal and once you're planting a few dozen, you might as well plant a few more. Better to have too many than not enough. Plus any extras don't go to waste. Potatoes are very popular with most of the animals.

Face to face with The Blight

Wednesday 1st August 2012
Summer could be over!

I didn't mention this before, but when I was wrestling with the (non) self-drilling screws on the polytunnel I wrenched a shoulder muscle fairly badly and have been trying to rest it ever since. This was not helped when the geese discovered they could easily hop the fence. I had to catch them and clip their wings, an adventure which set back the already slow recovery of my shoulder. Next morning, one of them was back over! So I had to attend to the fence.

The point of this shoulder story is that, lurking in the background has been the urgent need to venture into the maincrop potatoes. I need to pull the tops, hopefully before the tubers become infected, but the fat hen and sow thistles have grown gigantic and will need to come out too. Last time I tackled a giant sow thistle it beat me!

Everything I've read about blight is starting to make sense now I've come face to face with it. I'll be much the wiser next year. For starters, I now know what it looks like. More importantly, I know how it behaves.

It starts as blotches on the leaves, which quickly shrivel up and die. Then it heads down the stem, which turns brown and basically rots. Now it's reached the tubers. Bad news.
Some of my spuds have, unfortunately, reached this stage. The potatoes nearest the surface are infected, showing spots of white, furry fungus, or just rotting down to a mushy mess. I don't know whether I'll be able to save any of those further down.

Others still have the stem fairly green and intact, like those below. With these, I've pulled the stems and left the tubers undisturbed in the ground. They need to stay there for two weeks so they don't pick up the blight from the soil surface when they come up.
Of course, there's also the question whether or not they've had enough time for the tubers to grow properly anyway.

Blighted spuds.
Not the worst though.

One variety, Sarpo Mira, seem unaffected at the moment. It is supposed to be the most blight resistant available. I've left these plants, but I'll be keeping a very close eye on them. If they cook nicely and taste good, I suspect they'll be high on the list for next year. It'll be interesting to note how the tubers have faired on the other varieties too.

Although not a great situation, I was always going to meet blight at some point, so I will just have to treat this year as a learning experience and salvage what I can.

One thing I do know is not to put the diseased material on the compost! It needs burning straight away.

 



Tops cleared away and burning.
In the background are the Sarpo Mira, which still seem healthy.
(Not the really tall ones. They are Jerusalem Artichokes!)



Blight

Sunday 29th July 2012
A heart-warming sunrise

Three nights ago I did the daily trip in the evening gloom to lock away the chickens and I noticed that our two guineafowl were not up on their normal fence. I could just make out the distinctive spotty feathers of one of them in the roost house with Cocky and his harem. This I found moderately insulting given the fun and games we used to have persuading them to actually go in there at night!
This has been repeated for the last two nights and Lady Guinea has only been seen briefly twice. Other than that, she has gone AWOL.
I am hoping she is sitting on eggs somewhere, but I don't want to count my chickens yet ... that may not be quite the right phrase to use.

Burning diseased potato haulms
and ragwort.
Not an easy task in damp conditions.

Blight!

While I've been preoccupied with my polytunnel, a most unwelcome, yet inevitable stranger has crept onto the farm and destroyed my potato crops. Invisible, wafting through the air, thriving in warm, damp conditions, it strikes with alarming speed.


Having never actually seen blight before (only pictures in books and on the internet) I was not definite exactly what to look for, since at this time the early potatoes are dying down anyway. But I had my strong suspicions, especially when the maincrops down in the spare veg patch started to develop dark blotches on the leaves.

I knew it was coming and hoped it wouldn't strike my patch, but I couldn't have done anything to stop it anyway. Standard procedure is to spray with Bordeaux Mix, but to do that you need dry weather. By the time that came it was too late.

What has really surprised me, though, is the speed and deadliness of its strike. Okay, so I was busy with other things, but it has already virtually wiped out all of the foliage and made its way down the plant into some of the tubers. All I can do now is to pull all the stems and leaves and burn them, then wait two weeks before digging up the crop for storage. Its then that I know whether I've got any spuds left and whether they had time to grow properly.

As for the Earlies, I'll use them as quickly as I can. Even with a few losses it's still been a good crop. What a shame they are more difficult to store, but I have plans for a potato cookery day so a good proportion of them can make their way into the freezer in one form or another.

I should also learn which claims of blight resistance are the most valid.


At the moment, it seems as if the Edgecote Purples have fared best out of the Earlies. The Sarpo Mira have certainly lived up to their reputation, their lush green leaves standing out like a sore thumb amongst the withered, brown haulms of all the other varieties. It is possible that some varieties will have resisted enough for the tubers to remain largely unaffected. Let's hope so.

The fire produced plenty of smoke...

But I don't think
all this was down to me!

And before you think it, please don't leave any comments reminding me that blight can be even more lethal to tomatoes. I watch with crossed fingers.
The loss of many of my potatoes I can swallow. We had far too many anyway, and even if  the worst comes to the worst it won't cost us a fortune to buy them locally, even if our rather gourmet selection of varieties will be limited. But the tomatoes are a different story. Even if we don't sell any, they are a crop which simply cannot be replaced from the shops and I'll find it very difficult to pay through the nose for any that actually have any significant flavour.

Patriotic potatoes

Patriotic potatoes!

Fears of potatoes rotting in the ground were unfounded. They've enjoyed the moist conditions and the horse manure that I dug in over winter. Those that got bitten by the frost in early May seem to have easily caught back up too.
I harvested a few from three different varieties today and it suddenly hit me. If only they'd been ready a few weeks ago I could have made a lucrative profit selling jubilee potatoes!

I like to grow as many different types of potato as possible. That way, if any varieties fail me, I'll always have plenty of others. It also gives me cover against the various afflictions that can strike potato crops.
But the main reason I grow so many varieties is for the range of texture, taste and colour. The floury ones are better for chipping and roasting, the waxy ones for boiling and salads.

So, here are the Earlies I have planted this year:


Salad Blue
More purple than blue. Purple flesh too which stays purple on cooking. This variety has always cropped very well for me and gives bucketloads of sweet tasting pototoes for boiling. Only downside is they can suddenly turn watery if overcooked, but purple mash is always a spectacle!

Red Duke of York
Dating from 1942, this heritage potato has a marvellous deep red skin colour and firm, yellow flesh. It is dry and mealy in texture and gives excellent chips and roast.

Dunluce
An excellent new potato which crops by the bucketload. Very firm flesh. I have found that Dunluces keep that new potato taste even if allowed to grow big. For this reason, I often harvest a few early on, then leave the others for later.

The jubilee chips made from the first three varieties.

Charlotte
I can never believe how much these sell for in the supermarkets. Although they are classed as Second Earlies, I already have a bumper crop of these lovely salad potatoes. Shame it's not really the weather for salads!
On that point, what on earth is a salad potato? Just a boiled potato gone cold I guess? Though they do stay nice and firm.

Arran Pilot
Around since 1930 and a gardeners favourite. A good yield last year so hoping for a repeat performance.

Edgecote Purple
Purple skin (surprise, surprise) and firm yellow flesh. Has been around since 1916. This potato is supposed to be an excellent all-rounder and I'm hoping it does well for me.
I will harvest this variety later on, as it supposedly shows good blight resistance. It's a Second Early too.

Bonnie
Bonnie by name... These white potatoes have rosy cheeks!
They produce an even size, large round spud, ideal for baking.

Swift
Supposed to be a high yielder and to produce the earliest potatoes. Mine seem to have been outperformed by other varieties. They have produced few leaves and the yield is nothing special.
Maybe not one for next year.
We have plenty more potatoes than we can manage anyway.

Thursday 28th June 2012
A stormy day in store

Blight
This warm, damp weather is ideal for fungi to take hold. The only redeeming factor is that it's been accompanied by a stiff breeze which should give enough airflow between the plants. This is one of the reasons for observing the advised planting spaces.
Still, today I received a text. I don't recieve that many texts, so I was half expecting it to be news of some far-flung mega rare bird. Unfortunately it was not.
It was a FAB text. (Fight Against Blight) warning of a full Smith period. You can sign up for these alerts with the Potato Council. It's easy to do and a useful tool in trying to avoid this decimating disease.

You may well be wondering what on earth is a full Smith period. I guess with so many Smiths in Britain, one had to have something named after him or her in the end!

This information is selected from blightwatch.co.uk. Please visit the website for more detailed information.


Smith Periods

---

Smith Periods for blight control are calculated from hourly temperature and relative humidity values.

A full Smith Period has occurred if, on each of 2 consecutive days:

the minimum air temperature was at least 10^oC, and

there were a minimum of 11 hours with a relative humidity of at least 90%

...

Smith Period conditions are conducive for sporulation of the potato blight pathogen on lesions - leaf wetness is also necessary for infection to occur. If Smith Periods occur at frequent and regular (7-10 day) intervals, there is a greater chance of blight development.

The Potato Council website gives lots of information, advice and links. Here's an example of the blight map they provide.

Display incidents from 12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec2012 to date Click on a dot to see incident details Click on a map to see your region 13 reported incidents to date for the selected region Id Outbreak Size Variety Reported Source Area Result 9082 Several Patches Marfona 13 Jun 2012 Crop/Other CT7 9086 Patch (1m2) Maris Peer 14 Jun 2012 Crop/Other CT7 9102 Patch (1m2) Other Maincrop 19 Jun 2012 Crop/Other GU29 9114 Scattered through field Desiree 21 Jun 2012 Crop/Other CT7 9118 Scattered through field Unknown 22 Jun 2012 Crop/Other NR10 9126 Scattered through field King Edward 25 Jun 2012 Crop/Other CT7 9130 Scattered through field King Edward 26 Jun 2012 Crop/Other CT7 9134 Several Patches Unknown 26 Jun 2012 Crop/Other NR14 9138 Single Plant Maris Piper 27 Jun 2012 Crop/Other PE20 9142 27 Jun 2012 PE11 9146 Single Plant Other Maincrop 28 Jun 2012 Crop/Other GU28 9154 Patch (1m2) Unknown 28 Jun 2012 Crop/Other NR11 9158 29 Jun 2012 DA13