Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi folks.......well, I was putting a thick layer of manure on the bottom half of my plot as the soil is very heavy and clay like. It hasn't really been manured before so thought I'd give it a good thick dose of the stuff. I'm planning to put my 4 lots of spuds on there.


One fellow allotmenteer said I must dig it in before the spuds go in. I said that, as i've got to dig trenches for the spuds, it would be dug in then, and as the manure is well rotted, I can't see the point in digging it in twice.

Now then, I belong to the "i'm not bloody digging if I don't have to" school of gardening, but and wondering what you lot think.

Dig it in now....or wait till it's trench digging time........folks, it's over to you

BTW........Grockie sends a big sloppy kiss to everyone

Morning Lizzie, what an early bird you are this morning.

Regarding the manure, i don't think it would make a huge amount of difference when it goes into the soil, as it is well rotted.
But if ground is on the heavy side, it really does benefit from being winter dug and left for Mother nature to do her thing.
You will get a far bigger crop of potatos if the soil is nice and crumbly, against being big and lumpy.

I know this is not what you will want to read, but i feel i must be quite strict with you over this matter.
Of course you will still get a fair crop even if left how it is, and it would save all that digging.

Can you thank Grockie for the sloppy kiss please, but do ask her to finish eating her creamy cake before she does it again.

Lizzie, leave it till you trench, hopefully then it will have dried out a bit and you'll be able to mix it up a bit.

If you use a rotovater to assist with trenching then even better.
My Merry Tiller's skid/depth-bar leaves a groove that a dutch hoe turns into a shallow trench and I have a proper baulker for my Howard 350.

Oooooooh! Do you now Peter?!

(Sorry - just couldn't resist.....)

Tigger wrote:Oooooooh! Do you now Peter?!

(Sorry - just couldn't resist.....)

I also have a plough, but not the bolts to secure it to the machine.

Now you're really sowing off.

Tigger wrote:Now you're really sowing off.

He's what? Is that another awful pun (that I'm not getting) or is your spelling on the fritz again

Sorry - my brain's full of porridge. I've got pneumonia and am poorly bad. Even had to concede to staying at home from work this week.

Dear Tigger, sorry to hear you are not well, hope you are soon back to your normal self.

Keep yourself warm and snuggle up with a James Martin photo.

or dig yourself into a load of manure.....that will keep u warm

Sounds like for clay soil, you want this mixed in with the soil as OH has suggested.

One other point for people with more loamy soil, if you dig manure in directly round the potatoes, will it encourage slugs more? I have so say that they're about the only problem I get with spuds and I've resorted to using "sowing" slug pellets around my seed potatoes.

One school of thought is to leave organic matter (like compost or manure) on the surface and let the worms drag bits down - eg "no dig". I wondered if that has a different effect on slugs from directly digging in?