"0tterbot" wrote in message
"Stuart Naylor" wrote in message
On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 06:09:15 GMT, "0tterbot" wrote:

small desiree patch:

I have potatoes in flower at the moment and they do usually flower
before they die off, but if you have kept the water up to them you
may
have missed seeing the flowers and they might be ready to harvest.
Have a bit of a careful dig around near them and see what you can
find
in the ground. Wish you luck.

ta for that :-)

in the absence of any replies saying "yes, it's clearly
potato-disease-from-hell", i decided to stop panicking :-) after i
read your
reply i had a think, & can recall a time when some of the plants had
buds.
then, i don't know what happened. it's quite possible the %#$!!
grasshoppers
ate the buds off, for all i know (they are voracious little
blighters - they
eat the tops off anything). i had another poke around, & there are
some big
taties down there. (and some little ones). i think it might be time
to
harvest soon, regardless of what happens next!

You mentioned that the spuds had been in for 3 months. IIRC, Desiree
has about a 120 day to harvest period?????? so it may be a bit early
to think of harvesting them. Pehraps it might be worth checking out
the days to harvest for the varieties and check you garden notebook to
see when you did plant them to be surer.