what's wrong with my potatoes

[Marjorie]

My potatoes were thriving until we recently had a period of heavy rain. The stems appeared to start rotting and although the pots aren't damaged, they're not what you could call large.
Should I harvest what I have? Cut the stems off? Any advice would be most welcome!
Marjorie.

[Jez]

Welcome to the forum Marjorie.

Can you describe the rot in a bit more detail - which part of the stem and the appearance of the rot? I'm by no means an expert in potato diseases, but it sounds like either blackleg or sclerotinia...neither of which I've ever had to deal with, but my guess is it would be one or the other.

[Duckpond]

I hope i am not hijacking this thread, but i was about to start a thread about my potatoes as well, so thought i should add my problem here.

I have planted my potatoes in large 90Lt pots. I put about 100 mm of soil in the bottom, then as the stalks grew added soil till now the pots are full. They did very well for a while, then seemed to sag and look a bit rotten. I pulled a few stalks out and found no tubers growing. In fact where i have earthed up in the pots, the stems have rotted. Any ideas??

[gardenlen]

i probably can't help much? but could the plants have become water logged?

also none say where they are in this universe? for me i live in sth/east qld and growing potato's means planting march/april and growing through the winter to harvest about october or when the plants die off, too easy.

for duckpond maybe too much soil build up? and not so good drainage? i tried grwoing in tubs made by cutting one of those blue plastic 44 gallon drum in 1/2 across the middle, put some composted earthy material in the bottome enough for the tubers to be covered then mounded with straw/hay and the results wher a total loss got about a 1:1 return that is one spud for each seed spud planted, so gave up on container planting.

have a look at our instant potato patch this system always works well for us and we get a 5:1 return (that is 6kilo's of spuds for each kilo planted)of good eating spuds, but again i would be bothered trying to grow them at this time of the year as it is way too hot and they would need lots more water, plus they tend to want to flower more in the heat and for me flowering spuds have never returned much, as well as you ahve to contend with all the bugs that want to destroy your plants.

len