Potato blight or overwatering?

N

NY_Resident

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Hi - I started a vegetable garden this year. All of a sudden (overnight), my potatoes look like they’ve caught blight. I don’t believe this is possible as the weather conditions have not been conducive to blight. Could it be overwatering? I did water a couple of times over the weekend, and we had really heavy rain over the last 48 hours (and it’s clay soil which retains a lot of moisture). See atattached picture. Thanks!
 

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Dig up one, it'l be squashy and the smell will soon tell you. To me it certainly doesn't look like blight from the photo
 
Tkx - the yellowing of leaves literally happened overnight, so even if it was blight (which I don’t think is possible), it won’t have travelled to the tubers yet.
 
Would blight not be widespread in your area?

Or does it single out individual farmers/gardeners?

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Would blight not be widespread in your area?

Or does it single out individual farmers/gardeners?

Brendan
Click to expand...
That’s what I thought too Brendan. I can’t believe it’s blight - the weather conditions are nowhere close to what’s needed to spread the disease. I think it’s either too much water (heavy rain, clay soil and the fact that I watered the day before the heavy rain) or frost damage

On your second question, it is possible to have blight disease in the ground, but as this is a new vegetable garden, the ground has not been tilled before and therefore I doubt that blight is in the soil.
 
Thanks Retired2017 - I did water,but don’t recall any recent frosts. Agree on the earthing up — they seem to have really grown over the last week or so.
 
In the south east we hail shower on Saturday morning, and a light frost at least 2 nights since. Enough to do some damage to new growth.

I'd cut off any wilted leaves so the plants can send nutrients to the good ones.
 
Just a quick report back — I think it was indeed some frost damage. From speaking to others in the locality, we did get some light frosts which I apparently slept through!! It’s a couple of weeks since I posted this thread - since then, the crop has thrived. Thanks all.
 
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