[Lardman]

Just pottering around the T&M website and stumbled across Brimstone Rapide - does anyone have any first hand experience?  Spuds suffer from terrible scab here and the promise to dramatically reduce it is very tempting.

[Iain@JBA]

The brimstone would help with scab as long as you get rainfall at the correct time or if you can get water to them when you need them.
Scab normally occurs when there is a dry period at tuberisation which causes damage to the tiny tubers skin and this skin damage increases in size at the same rate as the tuber grows. The brimstone should be added above where the mother tuber is and to where the new tubers will be growing. The idea of the brimstone is to increase the acidity of the soil and kill the bacteria which can be present in soil and cause scab. The draw back is though if you get no rain it won't work.

[Lardman]

Thought it sounded a little too good to be true. My soil is very alkaline sand whether this is the cause or just compounding the water shortage problem Im not sure.. They are grown in the back garden and I do try to keep them watered.

I think I've posted this before but most of them look like the picture.

[Iain@JBA]

My garden is pure sand. I tried digging a small trench and filled it with once used compost. I placed the mother tuber near the bottom and put about 4" of compost on top. I then hilled up with the soil as need be. The potato skins were perfect so maybe you could try that.
I probably used an 80litre bag of compost for 5kg of planted spuds.

[Swing Swang]

Used brimstone last year for the first time.
The advice that I was given suggested two dosing regimens - higher dose for alkaline soils, and lower dose for acid soils as it still increases fertiliser uptake and reduces scab.
I used the lower dose on my acid soil in the manner proposed by Lardman, and used a potato fertiliser at the reccommended dose. The ground had previously been trenched and filled with well-rotted manure and sharp sand to improve drainage,
Untroubled by scab and had huge yields. So large in fact that my 'new' potatoes were still being dug out of the ground in late August. I'll use the same method next year and only grow half of the crop.

SS

[Swing Swang]

I should add however that scab has never been a major problem - it happens, but for personal consumption I don't consider it to be any mor than a cosmetic blemish - blackleg, blight, eelworms, slugs etc much more of an issue,