spots on spuds
pennypat
Posts: 39
in Fruit & veg
Hi, help please...
My potato plants have gone yellow and look like they are dying, I dug up a few and the base of the green bit is discoloured and has nothing on it, the few tubers I found have very small white spots on them.
What am I dealing with?
0
Posts
This is all natural and nothing to worry about. You should after you dug them up. Leave them on top of soil for 30-1 hour, so the skins can dry out.
Potatoes form on an underground stem from the plants main stem, think of lots arms with a potato attached. The seed potato which you describe as " the base of the green stem is discoloured and has nothing on it ". Well yeah, the seed potato was only needed to grow the plant. The potatoes produced don't grow from this part of the plant.
Again, everything sounds fine to me, a part from perhaps a small crop, which sometimes happens.
Sorry I seem to have confused you!!
It is the whole plant that has gone yellow, and yes I left the spuds to dry but they still have spots... I am planning on cooking them for tea so I may be dead tomorrow...
I do hope you won't have to post us from the other side...
Regardless of what appears to be lost in translation, unless it's a mouldy growth of some considerable size, which I doubt from your description. They are still fine to eat. They've just spent a number of weeks underground - expect some anomalies.
In fact it sounds like lenticels - natural pores used for the exchange of gas. ALL perfectly natural and safe to eat
Keep calm and carry on eating.
Pennypat, if your potatoes are first earlies and you have had better weather than me then they should be turning yellow and dying back around now as they're ready! Lots of potatoes have silver/white spots/pores as marshmello says, they can just be more noticeable on smaller early potatoes.
Enjoy your spuds!!
Thanks for all the advice, i am still alive and for the record the potatoes were the best i have tasted for a long long time, must be something to do with going rapidly from soil to pot!! Looking forward to more!
i woulldnt worry.ive had the same thing happen to me.a couple of days ago i noticed a container that has spuds in it - all the leaves had turned yelllow,followed by another two.ive moved them away from the rest of my potatoes,and worried,i tipped one of the containers out into a wheelbarrow.nothing wrong with the spuds,all lovely and fully formed,but quite small.had them for tea last night and im still alive!!i do remember they got some frost on them tho,could be that.