Do we really need potato fertiliser?

Potatoes are heavy feeders and benefit from fertilisers. However, I don't use a lot on my early crop where my objective is to harvest small "new" spuds.

I'm not sure what the connection is with growing in raised beds and not having to feed them.

What did you use to fill your raised bed last year? If you added bagged compost/manure it amy not have needed any more.

I think you get a bigger crop if you can add manure or fertiliser as potatoes are a hungry crop.



sort of snap

The raised bed was an experiment last year!

We did use a lot of bagged compost and we only grew 15 Maris Piper seed potatoes and we did get a very good crop too but we didn't space them enough to have a big crop.

On top of that we grew tomatoes (romano), lettuce, spring onions, and carrots.

The raised was only 12 ft x 5ft so wasn't large enough to grow a lot.

Horse muck is fertiliser!

Organically add as much horse muck, compost, chicken manure pellets. Your ground will also be in perfect condition for whatever crop goes there next. The inorganic route is to use specific potato fertilisers and growmore and things like that. You will grow fine potatoes with this but you will need to add more fertilisers for following plants. My advice is to feed the soil, not the plant. Add as much muck as you can!

My plot is still fairly new to me.

The first year I dug and planted as I cleared space using a bit of chicken manure pellets for fertilizing. Crops were reasonable given I don't know how the soil had been managed prior to me getting it

I managed to get some cow manure which went down over about a 1/3 of the plot n December and this was covered until I put my spuds in in spring. I did no watering on the spuds and managed to have enough to last from May until March the following year.

Brassicas went where the spuds were and I'm still harvesting sprouts and cabbage (this will be the last of them though) Roots are going in this bit next.

Last July I got some more cow manure which went down again where this years spuds are going. Some may say a waste of ground, but at the moment feeding the ground is more important.

By the end of this year I will have manure all my plot and will be starting again. All I can say is compared to my neighbours who use artificial fertilisers I seem to get better crops, less weeds and have to water a whole lot less. We have quite sandy soil on a slope so it does have a tendency to dry out.

Like others, we manure our potato plot before planting. But when we actually plant the potatoes, we first add about 1 tsp of regular fertilizer to the bottom of the planting hole, knock a bit of soil in, set the potato on top, then cover with soil.

We find this gives the potato a bit of extra boost until it can access the manure. We've done this for many many years and always get a wonderful crop.

Manure is more of a soil improve - soil structure - than reliable fertiliser.

FBB will be fine, but specific potato fertiliser is even better in that it is specifically designed to provide the right balance of nutrients for the plants.