Ear To The Ground: Diggin' my potatoes...but were apple trees the real blighters?
As I start this, the view out of the window is dominated by a large grey cloud.
The top of it is out of sight, and below it and all around are brilliant shining white clouds and blue sky. The sun is actually shining from one of these blue patches, out of sight, above the cloud.
It's been that kind of summer, so far; passing clouds taking the edge off, but not bad for temperatures, some good sunny spells, and the showers just heavy enough to top up the water butts.
The second early potatoes, the Marfona, showed off with a beautiful stand of foliage. When they flowered, they could almost have been mistaken for a white herbaceous plant. They set few fruits, so I had none to remove.
All I had to do was keep liquid feeding and wait for a bumper crop. It is said to be important to remove potato fruits if they appear. It is logical that if the plants are using energy to produce seeds, they will divert less into the tubers. They are poisonous anyway, just as the leaves are.
I gave them a good watering just before I went away for the weekend. When I returned I noticed the Marfona spuds had "turned the corner" – gone to the stage of the foliage, or haulm, dying down, signalling the tubers were as big as they were going to get and could be harvested any time. There's no rush. The haulm can be allowed to almost wither away and the crop will be OK.
But then I noticed a worrying sign. Not only were the leaves rolling in from the sides, but there were black spots, which showed on both sides of the leaf. Some of these spots on close inspection had a fine white mould around them - blight!
I immediately re-arranged what I was doing that day. I didn't want to lose my main baked-potato supply (Marfona produces nice big round tubers).
I first carefully cut down the haulm with secateurs, bagging it up as I went, leaving 4 – 6 inch (10- 15cm) stalks so I could find the clumps of tubers when I started digging.
Luckily the weather was dry so next I could gently scrape away the top layer of soil and pile it alongside. This was to stop any spores which may have fallen on the soil getting on to the tubers. The blight fungus can affect them in storage, making them rot.
It remains to be seen if I have been successful.
A little patch of Red Duke of York potatoes nearby was also affected, not unexpectedly, but what was depressing was that the tomato plants in the nearby greenhouse also had it. They are closely related and suffer from some of the same diseases.
I cut off all the foliage of the tomatoes, except the top sprouts, which are unaffected. I'm hoping the tomato fruits will go on ripening on the bare stems.
I say it depressed me, but of course this is a relative thing. When we grow a few extras for the kitchen it's not crucial to our livelihoods, not like the Irish potato famine of the 19th century or the various nations suffering today from droughts and floods.
The shocking fact about the Niger famine is that there is no shortage of food overall in that country – it's just that the poorest farmers whose children are starving can't afford the prices.
We are just dabbling at producing a few extras, but to look at it another way, we are keeping skills alive, and passing them on, just as my grandfather passed them on to me. Some day it may again become very important indeed.
I learned something new about potatoes. After I had stored mine away in a dark cool place in a paper chicken corn sack I was looking something else up; the latest recommendations for storing apples.
I found this in Bob Flowerdew's Complete Fruit Book, page 22. He states without further explanation that "Apple trees are bad for potatoes, making them blight-prone". I had the potatoes this year next to my two apple trees.
I mention the passing on of skills. The storage and selling of potatoes is a skill which is fast disappearing. I've lost count of the number of shopkeepers I've talked to about it.
They tend to stack a whole shelf of them out in the sun or under bright lights. They soon go green and are then poisonous, just like the leaves.
As I understand it, the alkaloid poison is all the way through, and not removable by peeling or cooking. It's a shame, because they are one of the most nutritious forms of carbohydrate.
Old boundaries are no longer in place; once only greengrocers sold them. Now it is corner-shops, post offices, even fishmongers.
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Weather for Halifax
Saturday 11 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -1 C to 0 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 2 C to 5 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: North west
