Potato famine disease striking home gardens in U.S.

unclejoe

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Unfortunately it is here. We had such a cool, wet, sun deprived spring that it spread quickly. I just pulled up 2/3 of my plants and burned them. It doesn't seem to have spread to all of them yet, but I'm watching a lot closer now. I did get about 30lbs from the 25 plants I pulled but that's a far cry from the 100-150lb I was looking to have for winter. I'm going to wait a few weeks and plant again. :fl
 

FarmerDenise

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Our potatoes didn't have a chance this year. We usually plant in january. But this year every time they started to look nice, we would get a bad enough freeze that all those nice tops would be leveled to the ground. So now I'm using the potato bed for my compost, so that this fall I might be able to get some late potatoes in. After removing most of the compost of course.
 

user251

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we dont have it in the south yet that i know of however several of the folk around here were checking taters the other day and hod NO taters growing at all, we dug a few vines and nothing was there. i think it was the year 2012 nibiruinan giants that all the dooms day people worry about. they got them for baking taters. for real though there werent any on the plant.
 

Dace

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According to that article, tomatoes are very much at risk as well!

Well I guess I have a little advantage living in the dry climate that I do. Everyone should keep a watchful eye for this to prevent it from wiping out your potatoes and tomatoes.
 

hikerchick

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unclejoe said:
Unfortunately it is here. We had such a cool, wet, sun deprived spring that it spread quickly. I just pulled up 2/3 of my plants and burned them. It doesn't seem to have spread to all of them yet, but I'm watching a lot closer now. I did get about 30lbs from the 25 plants I pulled but that's a far cry from the 100-150lb I was looking to have for winter. I'm going to wait a few weeks and plant again. :fl
Oh no, you are way too close to me. I wonder if I have any problems? I dont' see any kind of blight or fungus on anything. My potatoes, in fact, look wonderful. But Dillsburg is too close to Dover for my comfort.
 

noobiechickenlady

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EEK!

I did some googling this morning after reading this, and came across this article. About halfway down is this statement: "Compost tea, applied as a foliar spray, is also reported to suppress late blight." There was a study done in Germany.

http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/lateblight.html

I'm so glad we had a heat wave when it was flooding here.
 

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