The blame of blight...

As I'm an avid twitter user, I have had the full backlash of the potato councils comments on blight steaming through all day. The likes of Monty Don, Mark Diacono have all been putting their own views forward on this subject. For those unaware, Allan Stevenson, chairman of the potato council, has urged people to buy supermarket spuds rather than grow their own. He said, "it would be preferable if people bought healthy, well produced potatoes from their retailer rather than grow their own." Now I'm no expert, I'm just one of the awful 'amateurs' he refers too who do try and grow their own, but if you have bought any spuds from a supermarket recently, you'll find they are far from 'healthy' and 'well produced'. Half are bruised, the other half are sprouting and beginning to rot. And lets not forget the bland and watery taste!!

His main point for all of this nonsense is the large blight problem mass producers have faced across the country this year. Allotments and amateur gardeners have been given a large proportion of the blame for not dealing with blight infected crops. He seems to fail to mention the chemicals used by large producers just haven't been up to the job this year and as we all know, this years wet and mild summer is not a one off. So just like us 'amateurs', the large producers have to adapt instead of relying on chemicals to sort everything out. Blight resistant varieties are out there and for some reason they choose to ignore this. As for the blame coming down onto us, composting blight infected potato foliage is not the problem, there is no evidence that the blight spores can live in compost and in turn, go on to infect next years crop. I hardly think our few rows of spuds can make that much of a difference. The other suggestion is that blight spores are being transported to commercial fields from allotments and gardens, has he not stopped to think this works the other way round and they have a lot heavier thump on us than we do on them?

I for one wont be taking a blind bit of notice of Mr Stevenson, I'm already planning which varieties ill be growing next year. And until the mass producers show any willingness to adapt their ways and even grow a decent tasting spud, ill be growing my own and dealing with the blight how i see fit. So Mr Stevenson, how do you like them potatoes....?