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Hi we live in France and are having to rethink quite a few of what would be our normal growing practises when we lived in UK. However, I am absolutely devastated with our new potato plot. My son decided that as potatoes(old) are so awful here we would go for it and try to grow loads to take us through the winter. I have never had too many problems with them in my small patch but I was absolutely gob smacked to find that 2/3rds of the potatoes all "Spunta" have completely failed. He told me that they were just poking through so he earthed up in the normal way, but there is no signe of them. I must admit I havent been to the plot until today to see what was going on and Will has never grown anything before so he didn't know what to expect. We dug down and found 1 shell of a seed potato in what would have been about 4 plants. The King Edwards are fine at the other end of the plot apart that is from the B...... Colarado beetles we also found.(we then spent 15 mins squashing as many as we could find)Can anyone tell us what we have done wrong please? Did he earth up too soon and too deep. The lines are quite high,or do you think they may have caught a frost just before he earthed up? or do you think eel worm have had them as it was meadow land for a long time? Help. Will is really fed up as it is his first veg plot and i have tried to tell him stuff like this happens to us all at times and you can't give up. If I could give him some answers it will help him for next year hopefully. Thanks for reading this (if you have) and I wait for comments. Regards Linda

[Yorkie]

Just wanted to say welcome to the site 

Sorry to hear about your spuds.  Did you have very harsh frosts, have you had very dry periods?  My hunch is that eelworm is unlikely but others may well know better.

[drcath]

I'm no potato expert, but at a guess I'd say a frost got them because it sounds like the plants failed completely. If not (there was green growth but no potatoes) then a varmint or blight sounds the likliest.

Are the potatoes that bad in France? My Mum lives there and I've heard no complaints from her.