should i cover a bed once ive dug it?

If you leave the roughly dug soil uncovered then any frosts will break it up for you. Covering it will prevent weed growth but if you can I would cover the dug soil with a layer of horse manure/ garden compost and let the worms incorporate it all into the ground for you. Growth of weeds will be affected by temperature but early spuds should go in before weeds are too much of a problem. Also you can remove any obvious ones as you plant the spuds.

Cheers HH  

in the autumn - i dug over the bed that i plan to use for spuds - then covered it in muck etc - then i just left it

yesterday i dug it over (monster worms in there   ) took out the few weeds that were growing in the muck - and i then covered it in plastic

i did this last year too - as i intend to put a few spuds in earlier than normal - the plastic will help to prevent it from freezing if it gets very cold