I got one of my friends, who happens to be studying Agroecology at UBC, to take a look at my potatoes. It turns out that my potatoes have common potato scab, caused by the soil bacteria Streptomyces scabies. It is recommended that I rotate my crops to keep the bacteria from becoming dominant in the soil, rotation helps with this by having other crops bacteria compete with the S. scabies and keep it in check. You can read all about this and other vegetable diseases at Vegetable MD
Sadly, that wasn't the only problem with my potatoes...
This little hole, looks so innocent. This is caused by a wire worm, a super prevalent problem here in the Lower Mainland of BC, it feeds off of grass roots and tubers. I remember seeing them when I was digging up the grass for the Mayan Garden, and they possibly could be the reason my corn did not succeed (other than a mismatched variety).
Look at what they did.
Thankfully both of these problems don't take away from the edibility of my potatoes, and since I'm not selling them, these pests are more educational than dire in their consequences.
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