Emergency Action Required

Here's a nightmare picture.  It is my potato patch after the chop.  The blight must have blown through our allotment site last week and the only thing to do was to chop off the haulms in a belated attempt to stop the spores descending into the soil and damaging the tubors.

20th August 

My haste meant that I neglected to take a picture before.  Here is the latest picture I can find of the potato patch, taken on 26th June.(July was busy)

26th June

There's no practical precaution that I know of for blight, aside from isolation from other potato plants.  That's not practical on an allotment site.  

At least for carrots the dastardly root fly can be kept out using a barrier method:

Environmesh protected carrots.

Thank goodness some crops are able to flourish out in the open without protection: Here's a current shot of the salad bed:

Also thriving on in the warm and wet conditions: squashes and sweetcorn.

I also had a nice surprise to discover a bumper crop of blackberries was ready for picking. 

I will be leaving the potatoes for storage underground for a week or two in the hope that any blight spores not removed with the leaves will dissipate out in the open.  Hopefully the emergency measures will have saved the crop.