I know many people who have benefited from growing these and there are apparently more varieties undergoing trials at the moment which is good, since blight has a history of constantly adapting! Reistant Varieties: Recently a small number of resistant varieties have been developed such as Sarpo Mira and Sarpo Axona, showing the best resilience.
Earlies don’t usually yield as much as maincrop varieties but they can be harvested before blight strikes so you don’t risk losing your crop.
Infected plants left lying on vegetable patches, or plants growing from infected tubers can both be sources of infection. There used to be only one strain of blight but in recent years a second strain has developed and the two types can mate, which is worrying since the resulting spores can over-winter, although this has rarely been seen in practice.
The early signs can be hard to spot, although brown patches on the leaves and stems quickly appear (see above picture). So what causes it and what are the best ways to tackle it?īlight is a fungal disease which spreads through spores blown by winds from one area to another, rapidly spreading the infection. Although it is commonly associated with potatoes, blight also affects some other members of the Solanaceae family of plants, the most common of which is tomatoes. Probably the most common plant disease, blight can wreck whole crops in a matter of a few weeks, as it did so devastatingly during the Irish potato famine in the 1840s where 1 million people died and a further 1 million emigrated.
It’s around this time of year that gardeners start to look forward to a bumper crop of potatoes but for those who have grown them before there is always the worry that the harvest will be spoiled by blight.
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