Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

It is quite incredible that you plant ONE potato and several months later it has become 15 or 20. The excitement of pulling back the dead and dying leaves and then brushing away the top layer of soil and seeing the potatoes being revealed is quite fabulous! And once again, our own muck has played a huge part! Our potatoes, just like our onions, have cropped beautifully this year. We have been eating them for over a month now and as each plant lasts us three to four days and an entire quarter of the polytunnel was given over to them (an 18m long bed), we should be eating them for a good few months yet. They are the 'early' type that won't get blight although this year, along with everything else, we are a fair few weeks behind and so fingers were (and are) crossed just a little!!
Blight is a fungus that attacks both potatoes and tomatoes and causes them to rot. It is most common in wet weather and usually it appears in July/August as it also likes warmth. The idea is that leaves of the 'early' potatoes will have finished growing by then and so won't suffer but 'main crop' potatoes are still growing at this time and so they might be attacked, In our first year here we grew main crop potatoes in the polytunnel and lost the whole lot overnight when the blight struck!! Nowadays you can buy 'blight-resistant' potatoes and tomatoes which 'may' not get blight and you can also spray your plants with a substance that protects them; again this 'may' work. Success also depends on the situation the plants are grown in (inside/outside, etc) and how wet/warm it is. Blight can remain dormant in the soil over winter and then 'emerge' the following summer: most of our neighbours have given up trying to grow late potatoes and tomatoes here as they tell us that the blight appears every year no matter what!! Shame!