Potato Help

Hi everybody......HELP!!! First year gardener and struggling. Feeling quite humbled already and certainly not the gardener I hoped to be in my first year.

Most pressing issue.......white mildew looking powder on base of my potato plants. (right where stem meets soil) I'm feeling confident it's due to moisture. I live in Linden VA and it won't stop raining and raining and raining....... anyway you get the point. Is this blight? What can I do? Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

One last minor issue,.......does this forum have spellcheck?

First off, I'm new too and have never encountered blight yet, at least that I know of! Anyway, I did a little google search of images of potato blight and found that it usually first appears on the leaves that are closest to the ground, not on the stems, so I think you might be in luck! Then I found this really cool chart of the life cycle of potato blight. I also did read that if based on what you are seeing you seriously think you have potato blight call your county agriculture extension right away. They can talk you through what you are seeing and do soil testing, plus advise you on what to do. It's a pretty serious thing, so they try to monitor it in the county. Anyway, here's kind of a cool link I found on the life cycle of potato blight and it contains some great pictures:

http://www.potatodiseases.org/earlyblight.html

As for what's going on with your potatoes? I'm not sure, but I'm sure someone else will have great advice for you!

Ohh, and yeah, spell checker works for me, as you type if you misspell something a red line appears under the word (at least in my browser!)

Good luck!

Katie

Laura,

Can't help with you potato problem but the spell checker I can. On the forums home page there is a "How To" section and thats where I found this link.
https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t2284-spell-checker

It worked for me as I am a terrible speller.

Chris