philcooper wrote:
Farmers don't use tools they use weed killer, as an organic gardener, I
wouldn't advise that

I've heard that many farmers have to hand pull volunteer potatoes that
are discovered in rotational crops such as onions and carrots. Perhaps
in this situation the use of weed killers is not effective? For some
reason, the farmers remove the entire tuber, not just the green
foliage. My understanding is that these are not organic farmers but
traditional farmers. This is obviously a very expensive operation
because of the labor involved. Why would they hand pull the volunteer
potatoes if it were not necessary for some reason?


philcooper wrote:
raycruzer Wrote:
So please root out volunteers and don't save your own seed when-
certified seed is so cheap-
To be clear, you are saying that to remove the threat of blight, all
potatoes must be harvested each year and any volunteer potato that is
discovered must be completely rooted out? Since this could be a lot
of
work, is there any special tool used by farmers to pull out volunteer
potatoes? Are there any studies that indicate the chances of blight
being caused by volunteer potatoes? For example is there a 50% chance
or 70% chance that volunteer potatoes will cause blight? This may
help
motivate us to do the work of uprooting these seemingly harmless
volunteer potatoes.



To reduce the risk of disease for all your crops you do lots of things,
the motivation is to keep your (and others') crops disease free. A way
to drastically reduce diseases being carried over from year to year is
to clear the ground; with all root crops that means making sure none of
the crop is left in the ground. It does involve "work" but so do most
elements of gardening - I think it is part of the hobby of gardening

Farmers don't use tools they use weed killer, as an organic gardener, I
wouldn't advise that.

The potential for spreading blight comes from the foliage so hoeing
this off, which is the normal way of dealing with weeds, is enough.

For soil-born diseases such as eelworm then diging them out the answer,
when the leaves are spotted just fork out the plant.

I don't know of studies on percentages (the chance will depend on the
prevalence of the disease in the previous season) but I do know that
the vast majority of outbreaks of blight reported by the trade are from
volunteers. The trade runs a system call bligh****ch at
www.bligh****ch.co.uk and reports outbreaks to members with the cause,
the vast majority of these are volunteers.

Is that motivation enough??




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philcooper[/i][/color]