[rachelsco]

when my manure was delivered last september/october it was fresh from the stable, and i feel its nowhere near rotted down enough.
so i plan to leave it another year.  this is my third year on my allotment, and year one and two my potatotes were planted in generous amounts of w r m.  i wondered if any goodness from previous years stayed in the soil?  when last years potatoes came out it was manured again for leeks which ive just finished.  yesterday at my allotment shop i bought a big sack of 'groworganic' 100% organic fertiliser, made by organico in somerset, and i wondered if anyone else had used this product to good effect with potatoes.
thanks in advance for reading this, and i am grateful for any comments
 

[Trillium]

In a rotation plan, potatoes are usually in the first year of manure application because they need the nourishment. But in your case, you should be able to get away without manuring this year. I'd add the fertilizer to ensure you maximize your cropping.

[Kirpi]

Do you have any home grown compost from your bins you could sling on top? The worms will drag it in and the rain will sink the nutrients for you; no need to dig.

[Ivor Backache]

Your manure is over 6 mths old-same as mine and I am putting it in the trenches. Does it still smells pungent?

[Plottered]

Due to having a relatively new plot last season I didnt have any manure and little time to get any so spuds went in without and gave me a decent enough crop....I did add some of the 6x pelleted chicken poo though so that must have helped in some way. A couple of people dont use manure on our site because of the contamination risk  but they always seem to have good produce.

[BabbyAnn]

I've not always used manure in potato beds (I prefer to save it for the squashes) but with lots of compost and some fertiliser and I always get a decent harvest 

[DD.]

I don't manure early spuds.

After all, I'm not after big ones.

[AlaninCarlisle]

I frequently use fresh horse-muck as a mulch and nutrient source over my spuds. I make sure that there are about 3" of soil covering them and then put the muck on top of that. Seems to work for me

[Rexmundi]

Last year I planted potatoes in soil which had not been manured or fertilised in at least a year.

I was a new occupier and the previous year's potatoes were beginning to sprout, so I knew spuds had been previously grown. After planting my own,  I didn't feed or fertlise the soil whatsoever, but got a crop nonetheless. However, the potatoes were smaller than I would have expected them to be.

This year I have heavily manured (fresh and rotted) for the last 3 months. This time after planting, I intend to sprinkle on some Blood Fish & Bone, and as a result I expect to see a difference in size this time. 

So, in answer to your question, you may not need to have manured if size doesn't matter. Although the potatoes I grew were small, they were really tasty!

[Paul Plots]

I have 3 chunks of plot and grow my potatoes on a "new" chunk eacy year - 3 yr rotation.

I have never put manure on my plot and it was probably more than 12 years ago that my father added any. I do cover the emerging shoots with grass (as frost protection) and this eventually decomposes into the soil.

I frequently (every 2 years) dig in barrow loads of compost but avoid this before planting potatoes.

So......... plonk yours in and maybe give them a sprinkle of something like chicken manure. I think sun and rain play an equally important part in producing a good crop.

No manure on my plot....apart from the odd bagful around the fruit trees/bushes in autumn.

[Hamani]

Allotment soil tends to have been cultivated for a VERY long time (my own patch has been worked for nearly 100 years!). So missing manure for just a year will probably do very little. Just make sure you put some growmore down and it should be fine.

- Gary.

[Kirpi]

Do we tend to think that potatoes are a hungry crop and so potatoes have always been the manuring year of the rotation, or was the manuring originally done in that year because the comparatively larger seed potatoes had a better chance to push through the muck than other smaller seeds so it was just done out of convenience and the land had to be mucked some time so may as well be potato year - just a thought.

My (little) experience has been that my heavy feeding year, when I sling everything I've been composting onto the bed has been squashes and by the time potatoes come round in the rotation the bed has settled down. Then I stack spent hay and hutch clearings onto the bed, topped with lawn mowings as they come in and just lay the seed potatoes on the ground under this deep mulch. They root down in the soil under the mulch.

The result is clean potatoes and plenty of them, although I haven't done a control to compare against soil sown seed potatoes to be fair. I think wireworms are soil dwellers so having the potatoes growing in hay keeps them from being drilled and they seem to avoid being munched by slugs as well.

[JayG]

Spuds produce a large canopy of leaves, and (hopefully) a large crop of storage tubers, about 90% of which are water, so it's hardly surprising they are hungry plants which need plenty of moisture.

Manure in the soil should help provide both, but as ever there are many ways of achieving the desired result, including the use of fertilisers if necessary. 

[rachelsco]

thanks for all the useful comments
 
i think i will plant my 3 rows of arran pilots to follow my leeks, as dd says they dont need to be big.

 the fresh manured area is about 30ft by 16ft and about 1ft deep in very strawy manure (maybe i can plant down into the soil beneath,(thanks for that alan)

 ivor - i will smell it to see if it is still pungent, it that how you test for maturity?

unfortunately i cannot produce enough of my own compost to use on the allotment, i always keep it for my garden, so ill use my groworganic fertiliser as necessary when planting in other areas.

( i'm amazed how many seed potatoes my allotment shop crammed into a 2.5kg bag, there were 50 arran pilots, all sizes)  thanks again all those who took the time to reply.
all i need now is some reasonable weather so i can get digging

[Ivor Backache]

ivor - i will smell it to see if it is still pungent, it that how you test for maturity?

Not so much a test-more an indication. Despite its colour, manure is a green material in compost because it has so much nitrogen from the urine. I stack it with a carbon material, eg open newspapers, every 4" or so and it all  composts nicely. It still looks horsey, but it breaks up with a fork and doesn't have that pungent smell. Leave it longer to compost and you have the so called 'black gold'.