Problem: blight in potatoes

[Joel_BC]

Anyway, doesn't blight stay in the soil for a couple of years? I have fought blight on green beans for a number of years. The first year I just left garden debris in the garden. Wrong thing to do. Ever since then, I have picked off every leaf that didn't look healthy, bagged them and put them in the burn basket. The green beans looked better this past year, but it looked like it's moving to where I had the potatoes planted - OR so I thought. I picked off a few 'iffy' leaves from the potatoes. I don't know if that's a good indication of blight on spuds or not.

Late blight, which is what was going arond my neighborhood in the last two years, is airborne. From what I've learned, in cold climates it only overwinters in living plant tissue, like potato tubers left in the soil. But I'm open to learning more (and standing corrected).

 

[Marianne]

Eeeeuuuuuu. I left a bunch of little spuds in the soil. Last year I had so many volunteers from doing that the year before...I thought it'd be a way of getting 'free' potatoes.
Guess I'll have to wait and see. :/

 

[Joel_BC]

Eeeeuuuuuu. I left a bunch of little spuds in the soil. Last year I had so many volunteers from doing that the year before...I thought it'd be a way of getting 'free' potatoes.
Guess I'll have to wait and see. :/

Leavng old blighted plant remains in the ground is strongly advised against, of course. But the blight organism is basically airborne. You can rotate the areas in a medium to large size garden, and use a fresh area for growing your potatoes following blight.

But as I've said, I'm trying to identify blight-resistant potato varieties - as many as possible, actually. I'm assembling a list.

I'm really surprised there aren't more people here on SS who have experience dealing with this. Because blight can occur anywhere that is humid and/or gets a lot of rain. That covers a lot of teritory in North America.

 

[Joel_BC]

Please add to this list. Just to kick this discussion off again, here are some varieties reputed to be blight resistant and sold in North America. What little description about each that I have, at this point, is given after the variety name:

Sieglinde ('buttery', from Germany)
Defender (a resistant Russet)
Jaqueline Lee (round, yellow flesh)
Ozette (fingerling, white flesh)
Markies (baking, etc)
Sante (baking, etc)

I have a longer list of ones available in the UK. They've been dealing with potato blight over there at least since the time of the Irish Potato Famine. But there are 'import problems', and I have not found a source for most of the varieties they have.

In the above list, Defender is attractive. For decades (since I was a boy) I've planted Russet-type potatoes, so it was tragic for me to have my Russets wiped out last year! I'm encouraged to find a blight-resistant Russet is avalable in N America.

But several others on the list are also interesting to me.

 

[Joel_BC]

I found out about sevaral other blight-resistant varieties. Avalable in the US... and I'm hoping in Canada:

Golden Wonder
Sarpa Mira
Valor
Cara

Anybody know these ones? have experience with them?