[Anton]

Very appropriate, I see a lot of you are getting tooled up in case of blight. Well, over here in Flanders, where I don't think they give blight warnings, I spotted a potato plant yesterday that had definitely wilted.  I pulled it up and it came away very easily. I smelled it and there was no suspicious smell nor any horrible brown stains on the leaves or black on the stalks as you would expect with blight.

I was going to dig down deep and investigate underneath then I saw some leaves growing out of the side of the hillock. I thought maybe it's the slugs because a lot of the potato leaves on the other plants look like Belgian lace. Today, I spotted another one. One with wilting leaves (no brown marks) coming out of the side of the hump and on the other side a healthy stalk with a normal leaves on the top, but with a few perforations. Should I start panicking and get myself tooled up with that copper stuff?

Anton

[DavidT]

Any chance of a pic Anton? I`m wondering if perhaps your plants are suffering from Blackleg.

[Anton]

Thanks for answering. I took a picture on my mobile phone but of course I have to wait to ask my son or my wife to explain how to put it on my computer (the phone used to belong to my wife). Other than that I just looked at the pictures of blackleg on google images and there is no sign of rotting like on those pictures.

Anton

[Anton]

I haven't managed to post a picture yet but if you go to this page:
http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=40893.0
There is a picture a fellow gardener posted last year. My plants looked the same except they haven't reached to flowering stage yet (too cold up to now). Should I leave the plants in or what? Should they stay or should they go?

Anton

[Iain@JBA]

I would think it is blackleg is the plant has died back like that or stem canker.

[JayG]

If not blackleg do you think it could be eelworm Iain?

[Iain@JBA]

If not blackleg do you think it could be eelworm Iain?

I had never even thought about that but it could be possible.

[JayG]

If not blackleg do you think it could be eelworm Iain?

I had never even thought about that but it could be possible.

Sometimes think I'm the only person in the country who has experienced it!

100% certain a small area of my Charlottes suffered from it last year; the plants were weak and undersized and died back early; tubers were few and tiny. The cysts on the roots were the giveaway I think.

Growing Lady Chrystl this year which supposedly have some resistance to eelworm; have lost a few to blackleg but the rest look OK at the moment.

[Iain@JBA]

It gets confusing when there are 2 different types of eelworms but that does sound like the case JayG. Normally they affect an area of your potato patch for no reason.

We never get it in Scotland as we test the soil before we plant anything in the field.

[Anton]

Thanks for your comments. So what do I do if I have eelworm or blackleg? Cry?

Anton

[JayG]

Crying is good! 

You need to dig them out carefully to stop the infestation/infection (respectively) from spreading or being left in the soil for next year (almost impossible with eelworm; it is very persistent.)

If the roots, and sometimes the tiny tubers you find as well, are covered in tiny whitish or yellow/brown cysts you have eelworm; the stems of blackleg-infected plants will be shrivelled and blackened at the point at which they come away from the roots (which they do very easily.)

Needless to say the plants must be disposed of in a non-recycling fashion (preferably burning!)