Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat

Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Rach76 on August 18, 2019, 17:00

Title: Tiny holes in potatoes
Post by: Rach76 on August 18, 2019, 17:00

Hi all
I've harvested a couple of plants worth of Cara potatoes and they have small holes in a few of them. Should I pull them all out of the ground now?

There wasn't actually anything in the holes.

Title: Re: Tiny holes in potatoes
Post by: JayG on August 18, 2019, 17:54

Possibly wireworms, especially if the soil was recently grassed over, but more likely keeled slugs which live in the soil.

If it's only a few affected and you don't really want to harvest and store all of them out of harm's way, it's possibly something you may just decide to put up with, although damaged potatoes will start to rot quicker than undamaged ones.

Title: Re: Tiny holes in potatoes
Post by: Rach76 on August 20, 2019, 19:51

Thanks

I pulled up a few more today and they seem ok. Fingers crossed it was just a few. I've read that mustard manure is good to get rid of them so may be doing that soon.

Title: Re: Tiny holes in potatoes
Post by: rowlandwells on September 06, 2019, 10:26

funny you should mention holes in potatoes because we have the same problem and yes green manure as I think I said on this site  I'm going to grow mustard white Tilney @ 4.5grm/sqm all I need to do now is work out how much I need to cover the effected area and turn in before it flowers hopefully fingers crossed this will rid of us of this pest by the way as am a matter of interest we also grew cara