I planted a trial run of Yukon Gold in between Sungold cherry tomatoes and Cherokee Purple tomatoes last year (pics in another thread in this forum where I questioned about growing near tomatoes.) They did fine except I had to prune the potatoes back several times as they were growing into the tomatoes and vice versa. No blight on any of the plants last year. One of my best years yet. I hope this trend continues :?!?: As for the sunflowers MdTNGrdner, yes, the deer love them. I had a garden the past few years at the place I worked at as well as at home. I grew a lot of sunflowers at the work garden and if they weren't fenced, the deer munched them down. They would eat the pole beans I had growing up the inside of the fence as well. Grubby buggers those deer :evil:

-Frank

[QUOTE=brownrexx;685578]Do potatoes get EB? I have never seen it. They do get Late Blight but I grow earlier varieties and harvest them before late August when LB hits in my area so it's not usually a problem for me. Colorado Potato beetles are my main problem and I hand pick them daily. It doesn't take long and I am in the garden every day anyway so I just squish the larvae or eggs while wearing my garden gloves. This works pretty well but if it gets ahead of me usually one treatment of Spinosad gets them under control for the season.

I have used sulfur on my garden to lower the pH in the past.

I keep my potatoes away from my tomatoes as well.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the suggestion of only planting early varieties of potatos to avoid LB. So busy thinking how to extend the growing season that NOT planting a late variety never occured to me. :))

Potatoes can get early blight and late blight. Most commercial potatoes have little resistance to either. Where I live, EB tends to show up, but really has such a small impact that I don't worry much about it. Other climates may be impacted more from it.

The strategy to only plant early varieties is one method that is often used, and works as long as LB does not rear it's head early.

I prefer to grow varieties that are resistant to LB, but you generally have to get away from commercial potatoes to do that.

Regarding the rabbit question, I wouldn't worry about them. Potato plants can lose up to 30-40% of their foliage with no loss of yield. CPB can be much more destructive because they will completely defoliate plants, given the chance.