I grow potatoes in garbage cans as described by local garden whiz Ciscoe Morris:
Potatoes in a Garbage Can

Each year, I pick out a handful of potatoes to overwinter for the next year's seed. My favorites are the Bisons -- red skin, paper white flesh, yummy!

This year, my Bisons seem to have a problem! The leaves are turning red and dying.


My first guess is that they are not getting sufficient drainage. I have over a dozen holes in the bottom of the can, and another dozen on the sides an inch or so up from the bottom. Last week, I poked a stick in the holes to loosen the dirt around each hole and make sure they were draining. (Sometimes, the dirt here just likes to pack up and not drain.)

Help??? Any other guesses as to what's going wrong?

The Yellow Finns in the next can over are doing just fine.

You think it might be potato blight? There seem to be two types - early and late. It's a fungal disease that causes the leaves to turn brown and die, and also hurts the tubers. My neighbor is always spraying for it. It's like black spot in roses - you have to destroy all the infected material. If any of the potatoes you saved over from last year had it, that's the problem.

Jodi

(Waves to Jodi) Hi, neighbor!

Thanks for the insight. Hmmmm... could you invite your neighbor over to look at the picture I posted?

I guess it could be blight. I had all three varieties together in a bowl overwinter and the All Purples and the Yellow Finns are doing fine. I also don't use the same dirt from one year to the next--it goes back in the compost cycle, and isn't likely to get used again for five to seven years. Same for the tomatoes.

If it looks like that's what I have, I won't dump the Bison can into the compost pile at the end of the season, and I'll get fresh Bison seed next year. Ronigers says that their Bison is very blight resistant...but I've been overwintering this one for about six or seven years now. Last year's Bison crop was pretty small -- I only ate a half a dozen largish potatoes and overwintered about a dozen small ones. Maybe I've just hit the end of this line.

The only problem I've had with saving my own seed is that I get "netting" on the skin. It doesn't affect the taste, just the cosmetic appearance, so I've ignored it.