This topic contains 4 replies, has 4 voices, and was last updated by Stevie342000 13 years, 6 months ago.
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Hi Ben, the cold weather certainly makes for dramatically different conditions to previous winters. Worms are less busy near the soil surface – I think quite a few are hibernating. On the other hand, the frost is getting into all lumps of manure and compost so that when it thaws out, they will crumble apart when knocked with a rake. In this way, the manure or compost becomes a lovely dark, crumbly topsoil for planting into, and worms will come up for it in spring as plants are rooting into it.
I have just finished spreading cow manure on a bed where parsnips had to be levered out because they had grown so long in the undug clay. This levering loosened the soil more than I like for all vegetables except potatoes, which do grow well in artificially loosened soil. So I shall be planting potatoes into this soil, under the manure which acts as a fertile mulch on top and can be used to earth up (I should say ‘manure up’) the potato plants as they grow next spring.
Then after harvesting the potatoes (first and second earlies) in late June and July, I shall rake level all the remaining surface manure on top of the bed, before planting autumn salads such as endives, radicchios and oriental leaves, which thrive in the rich soil which usually, by then, has seen most of the manure taken in by worms during spring and summer.
Re the polythene, it may do some good if you have weeds to kill but otherwise I see little benefit, and it sometimes helps slugs to breed.
In other words, I never incorporate manure or compost. Vegetable plants love to root through them on the surface, and into the undisturbed but well structured soil underneath. Last year my potatoes were wonderful, grown as described above, and easier to harvest because of the tubers being closer to surface than normal (less sticky clay to deal with), as long as one makes sure to push compost around their stems in May and June to stop any tubers going green.
Charles – with your potatoes do you “plant” them chitted or unchitted? And when you do do you just place them on top of the soil but beneath the manure layer? If this is the case aren’t you having to manure them up very regularly to keep the tubers covered? Richard
Ben
How did your potatoes turn out in the end? From what I have read, the method is to top off soil with manure and/or a layer of compost upon which you plant your potatoes, then to top that off with a thick layer of manure/compost.
One of the guys on the plot next to mine uses this method, unbeknown to him he is using a variation on the no dig principle.
As I was not fully aware of No Dig when I planted my chitted potatoes in early or late March. I was advised by an old timer to use a layer of leaf mould cover that with a layer of soil in your trench and then to bank up all the soil as per normal.
Although that was not no dig the soil afterwards was so vastly improved it got me thinking and researching no dig later on in the year.
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