The warm, wet summer was disastrous for potatoes in Hampshire
and virtually every allotment on our site was hit by blight in
July. I left the Picasso spuds in the ground for a couple of
weeks before digging up and bagging and I've been watching them
like a hawk since then for signs of rot. (Well, obviously not
exactly like a hawk. Hawks tend to be carnivores. More like an
keenly observant and hovering potato-loving bird of prey if you
can imagine such a thing.) Blight is a funny old condition. The
potatoes can look healthy and happy, yet in the cosy conditions
of a paper bag in a dark cupboard, the disease - spread by the
fungus-like Phytophthora infestans - does its stuff, creating
dark patches under the skin, allowing the tubers to rot and
turning the spuds into a gooey mush. If you don't remove the
rotten spuds, then the whole bag can become liquid in weeks.
Each week I'm taking out one or two rotting potatoes from the
bags and putting them straight in the bin (not the compost heap
because the spores will