Witchcraft ?
Oh dear, oh dear. We dug up our potato crop last week, and the results were, to put it mildly, disappointing. Plot A, which consisted entirely of "first" and "second earlies," Swift and an unknown variety, produced very little tubers, and few of them. Plot B, which we exhumed a couple of days later, looked, at first glance, more promising. For a start, the tubers were bigger. Many of them the size of a small fist. And thee were plenty of them. But, as we began to sort them through it became clear that many had suffered slug or insect damage, and most of those that hadn't had a skin condition known as "scab."
Unsightly though it is scab (which can arise from poorly composted soil, or friction burns as the tubers are rocked around) does not make a potato inedible, but it does mean it will not store well.
It is now some time since our erstwhile partner, Spuds, hoiked her trowel and departed (taking with her our supply of hessian storage sacks and, in a kindly gesture, the first aid jar). And while we will never know for sure the reason for our poor crop of the eponymous "spuds" I, for one, suspect nothing more or less than... witchcraft
Practicing crop rotation on four-year intervals can keep scab levels low, but never follow potatoes with the following crops since these plants are susceptible to scab: Beets Radishes Turnips Carrots Rutabagas Parsnips
ReplyDeleteRye, alfalfa, and soybeans are believed to reduce scab problems when used in rotation with these root vegetables. Turn these cover crops just before planting for best results.