The "irish potato blight" is called Phytophthora infestans, and these symptoms don't correspond. The leaves show no black spots, just withering-- curl and softening. The rotted part of the tuber does not smell bad-- it's just mushy liquid. There was one entirely rotted tuber, probably the seed tuber. The rest of tiny tubers were either healthy or just starting to develop soft grey areas. Anyway, I'm less interested in naming the thing than doing something about it. I've pulled the affected plant and removed all its tubers from the soil. Do I need to remove all the plants around it or should I just wait and see if it spreads? Will an anti-fungal spray help?

It can be brown rot, but I'm not sure. The way you can be sure you have brown rot is some of the peaches in an advanced stage will have the brown dull powdery stuff on the outside. If that is what you have you need to spray, primarily in the early phases of fruit formation, to prevent the disease, and also perhaps a spray in July just before fruits start ripening. I use Serenade, an organic product, and it seems to work OK. You can also use propiconazole (Monterey Garden Fungi-Fighter). The peaches rotting in the bag are probably rotting due to brown rot, so it does sound like the fungus is present. The only thing about your description that doesn't quite add up is the way the fruits are falling off before they ripen. When you have brown rot they usually don't drop early, and in fact they can "mummify" on the tree, turning all shriveled and gross. Also it sounds like the fruits falling off look fine, just hard and unripe. It makes me wonder a bit if a storm or hail or something didn't come through and blow them off. One last thing it could be is some varieties of peach can drop fruits when they are young trees. It is common for them to drop in June but is not common to drop so late. Overall, I would spray for brown rot next year and hope for better luck.. Scott

I have 2 questions. Did the ground freeze and cause the potatoes to rot? Did you notice any problems with the plants before they all died off? I have left potatoes in the ground even when I lived in Minnesota (zone 4) but I covered them with lots of leaves to keep them from freezing. When we dug them in the spring it was just like digging new potatoes! I do agree that you may need to dig them up and destroy them because of contamination problems but that might be too late already if they were pretty badly rotted. BTW, sorry about the rotted spuds, that's very disappointing-I've been there too... Here is a link that might be useful: Vegetable Gardens

Depending on how large the leaves are, they may need to be trimmed to about 1/3 their length. The process of providing nutrients to very large leaves can slow the rooting. The cutting only has so much energy and most of that will go to the leaves. The leaves will help in photosynthesis to help provide energy to the cutting, but only so much. Most cuttings only have small claws that will become leaves. Andi