Potato blight or overwatering?

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
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.
 
Did you water them the night before what looks like blight appeared, there is a good possibility it is the results of light frost .can happen if you water before frost,
They appear to be well fed which means the are not frost hardy or blight hardy , get a blight spray to harden them up a little,Dithane spray tends to make them soft , if the were mine i would earth them up a bit more than shown in photo,
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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