Potato varieties - some further thoughts.

I had considered finishing with Nicola now that blight has started affecting us regularly, but its resistance to slugs and scab is good, problems are actually greater evils as far as storage and general usefulness. As long as action is taken early enough, it seems cutting foliage/strawing down do stop the blight from affecting the crop or and the yields isn't actually affected as badly. I have tried Sante in the past but I didn't rate the culinary quality, the yields weren't spectacular either and I didn't find the disease resistance any better than Nicola, though obviously the latter is more susceptible to blight. A possible alternative is Charlotte, which is a similar type of potato with a similar season and slightly better blight resistance, but less versatile than Nicola, with a smaller average tuber size.

The only other second early/maincrop I've ever liked was a round, purple-eyed variety whose name I forget. This was the highest yielding potato I've ever grown, but it simply couldn't find it after a couple of years. I think it must have been Picasso. Whether it would be as good in this location I don't know, its susceptibility to slugs might be a bit disappointing.

Tomato Blight

Another disaster. I had been growing bush tomatoes in the Growmate greenhouse. Unfortunately the design isn't blight proof, as water can enter in the gap at the top of the pyramid, and splash blight spores on to the tomato foliage below. I can probably find a way round by covering the gap loosely, but I won't be able to grow tomatoes in here next year.

Luckily, very little of the fruit had been affected by the infection and I managed to rescue a couple of pounds of tomatoes.

Blighted!

Returned from Wales to find all the potato crop badly affected by blight. Fortunately the infection was still on the leaves, and hadn't spread down the stems to the tubers (as far as I could see) so there was a hope of saving the crop. Fortunately I had been earthing up very assiduously which would help stop infection spreading to surface tubers.

The only way to save the crop was to remove the haulms at soil level and destroy them. I dusted the ground with some Bordeaux powder and slug pellets then covered the ground with at least 6 inches of straw (to cover the pellets from birds and act as a barrier to spores. I've just dug some Nicola, and this approach seems to have words.

This is the first time in more than twenty years of gardening in Oxford that I've had potatoes affected by blight, though outdoor tomato crops have always been affected from mid-August onwards. I had one plant affected last year, but the rest of the crop was unaffected. Sadly my favourite potato variety Nicola has little resistance to blight. The other bed of Rooster was also affected. I'm really glad I experimented with planting early, a couple of weeks before Easter. This meant the early tubers made a lot of early growth and the haulms were twice the size when blight struck; this certainly seems to have a more or less doubled the yield between the early and late-sown rows (though I didn't have time to weigh the crop unfortunately).

Now that blight is well and truly established in the garden, I will have to choose blight-resistant varieties.  T&M claim their maintcrop variety Sarpo Mira has 'unprecedented blight resistance'; I might give it a go and report back.