Potato Harvest treatment North Fife

Pre Harvest Potato treatment. burning off the foliage with sulphuric acid. Once the potatoes have flowered they can be harvested. Spraying kills off any blight and further growth, after a week or so the leaves and stems are shrivelled up and are no obstacle to efficient harvesting of the tubers by machine. Gone are the days when potatoes were picked by hand...a multitude of sore backs saved but income from employment now channelled to a few....contractors and land owners. This is acid rain big style, it can be balanced by an input of lime later. Imagine though the soil organisms having to flourish in such hostile conditions, truth is, they don't. Much farmland is now a dead growing medium requiring constant adjustment with chemical inputs. Next time you see a molehill, say, be happy because they live on worms which consume organic waste converting it into a balanced fertiliser. No chemicals needed, respect for all that lives ultimately will save us all.

The same Field earlier

Tayview 13th July

Tayview from Flisk, I love the cloud colours and formation. In the foreground a field of seed potatoes.

North Fife August 10th

Fisherman at Lindores Loch, on his phone, too bright, not in the right spot, wrong bait, sorry darling it's baked beans tonight.

Potato fields North Fife. It has rained and rained throughout the summer, most crops have so far benefited, not it seems this 20 acre or so, the brown vegetation on these potatos left, lifeless and dead. Just too much water. Climate change has affected crops worldwide, corn in America, tea in India..... How fragile our existence is, it seems to becoming a bigger issue each year.

Potato Field North Fife

Potato field near my home in North Fife showing the vegetation killed off by the sprayed application of sulphuric acid. The acid kills off any blight which grows in the leaves that migrates into the tubers also making the harvest by machine more efficient also when a field is grown and sold as seed potato the seed size is kept within limits suitable for machine sowing the following year.