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

"0tterbot" wrote in message
...
yes, i'm panicking, thank you for asking :-)

the other day, all my taties looked excellent.

as of just now(?!), there's two problems that have appeared all of a
sudden:

small desiree patch:
a number of the plants are turning yellow all over, with the leaves
curling inwards & drying out. i carefully dug around to look at the baby
taties of the diseased(?) plants & the bigger ones seem to have slightly
more textured (wrinkled? what would be the word?) skin than one would
expect, not smooth like a baby spud still in the ground. others, otoh,
looked quite normal to me. i didn't dig around very much though, of
course. (was that a bad thing to do?)

is it possible that they're just ready to dig up??? they never flowered!!!
kylie (who will feel like an idiot if the plants are dying because it's
just
time to harvest.)

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!
kylie (i think this means i feel like an idiot ;-)