Half of my crop has these 'scabs' all over them, which is really annoying! Though they look abit black in the picture, fresh out of the ground they were brown in colour. At first I thought I might have had blight though having never had any diseased potatoes of any kind I was not sure! So On to the RHS website I went to confirm my fears that it was blight.
As it turns out the most likely candidate was not blight but Potato Scab!And whats worse it was probably my fault. The RHS says....
Common scab is caused by Streptomyces scabies and powdery scab by Spongospora subterranea f. sp. subterranea. Both are pathogenic micro-organisms and cause rough, scabby patches. Scabs appear during summer and persist on harvested tubers throughout storage.
It turns out the above diseases are at there worst through dry periods in the summer and I have to say I was not watering them enough. We had the hottest and dryest summers I can remember for a long time and certainly since I have been gardening and I was watering at the same levels as last year where we had a far wetter summer. So I have lived and learnt from this experience.
The spuds though won't go to waste, the most scabby ones have been boiled up as mash and fed the the chickens, they love it, Others with minor scabbing will be eaten first and hopefully the good bag will store well for winter. As a small back up I have some Nadine potato's growing in a tub for some Christmas new potatoes.
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