what ate my spuds ??

[scrumpyjax]

This is my first year on the plot and I need some advice about what's eaten a huge amount of my spuds
All my first and second earlies were badly mauled..some were literally just shells . The crop was well earthed up so it's not birds. I checked my desirees today and they are under siege too
Help and advice please...photos supplied.

[Two_Sheds]

eeewwwwwww

slugs

[rustylady]

Birds don't eat potatoes. Agree with TwoSheds, it was probably slugs.

[Aberdeenplotter]

Looks like rat teeth marks on bottom left spud and the right hand one also looks rat eaten. Slug damage may be secondary.

Slugs normally eat a hole into a spud rather than graze off a large area.

[Aberdeenplotter]

I had a rat in my plot shed last year which had a ball among my spuds. Its toilet training wasn't good either and the shed was stinking. Horrible beasts. We have a plot with pigeon lofts on it adjoining ours. Where there is a free and available source of food i.e. pigeon food, there will always be rats. When they have food they breed and when they breed they spread into adjoinging allotment sheds

[scrumpyjax]

We do get a lot of field mice and moles...could they be the spud munchers.....looks like teeth marks to me too.

[Aberdeenplotter]

Mice do eat spuds so yes it could be them

[sewer rat]

I'm with AP on this one. I used to plant 75kg seed tubers per year and I once lost absolutely loads of tatties to mice - they seemed to like Foremost the best. I recall that they were also very partial to beetroot - Cylindra was their fave as so much of it shows above ground.

[scrumpyjax]

Thanks for all the advice---at the moment I'm trapping about 5/7 mice a week but is there anything I can put in the soil to get rid of them??
And what will keep the slugs off ??

[Aberdeenplotter]

slug pellets is about all you can do now but next year consider using slug nematodes earlier in the year at earthing up time. As for the mice, an average of a mouse a day is a lot of mice. Set more traps mate. Also is your growing area adjacent to somewhere that encourages mice?

[scrumpyjax]

Yeh! bought 4 more traps today. My allotment is bordered by fields and we get muntjac deer,foxes,bunnies,rats,pheasant...all sorts. Allotments are rare as rocking horse poo around here (west oxfordshire) so you take what you can get and work it...Talking of poo...I did dig masses of gg dung in last year and there was a lot of straw in it. I wonder if this helped the slugs to get a hold before the spuds were even in. Anyway..thanks and goodnight.

[Aberdeenplotter]

I suspect the slugs were already there. Nematodes at earthing up time is definitley the answer. Made a huge difference to my plot and eliminated keeled slugs which are the ones that live under the ground and do the damage. Not cheap but still worth it.

[rachvit]

I've experience this before with some I grew last year. I found one with a slug attached to it. I was not best pleased...

[roitelet]

Got the same problem, and now they have had two of the parsnips as well!!!!! It has been suggested that the culprits are voles.