[mpod001]

Hi everyone,

I was late at planting my main crop (Kind Edwards) and with the summer being so hot, the sun has literally burned off all of that leaves on the potatoes. They look literally dead! Will the tubers still continue growing or shall I just pull them up and harvest them as new potatoes?

Thanks

[mumofstig]

if there are no leaves then there is nothing to feed the tubers - so they can't get bigger 

Dig and store - or just dig them up as you want to eat them

[mpod001]

:'( thanks Lesley! I thought as much but was hoping the tubers would continue to swell underground!

[JimB]

.
It has been a funny season!

It would appear from comments by other plot holders on our plots that foliage of potatoes dieing early  has been a problem this year!

I had some early Dunluce and main crop Sante left over, I forgot about them, then I found them and planted them very late but there was some very wet weather after planting  which must have helped!

As soon as the haulms came through the soil, they all started flowering, but I removed the flowers!

The haulms never grew very tall, then they went brown and fell over.

(The rest of the crop, have behaved normally!)

I have dug the  late planted lot and have had a good crop of decent sized spuds, but they are seem to disintegrate quickly when cooking, if not watched!

Also so much for the hot potato or old wives tale, once the plant flowers the tubers are ready, as my normal planted  early Dunluce had no flowers that I can remember, and there is an excellent crop!

Cheers!

[Nobbie]

It may well be blight that has killed of the tops. have a search on here about blight for some pictures and advice. They certainly need digging up as they will not be growing anymore and will get eaten by slugs the longer they are in the ground.

[Steveharford]

All my spuds both early and main died off quickly. No blight. They'd just had enough.

[DD.]

Also so much for the hot potato or old wives tale, once the plant flowers the tubers are ready, as my normal planted  early Dunluce had no flowers that I can remember, and there is an excellent crop!

Cheers!

I think you're making that up! Certainly when spuds flower you can have a furtle to see if they are ready to harvest as "new" spuds, but no way would they be mature. That only happens once the foiliage begins to die off.

Also bear in mind that not all varieties of potato flower, so that adage wouldn't work with them anyway!

[Snoop]

Are you growing them in a greenhouse or under plastic?

If they're outside, it strikes me as unlikely that it's the sun that will have done the damage.

I guess you've had a furtle. How big are the potatoes at the moment'