On The Use Of Green Manure In Growing Potatoes

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Response to the article by experienced gardener S. M. Korolkova "Preparing the soil for potatoes"

Any person with a normal education, accidentally hitting 6 acres of a horticultural plot, rummages through the mountains of Soviet literature, studying the basics of horticultural art, while constantly experimenting and constantly applying lighter and simpler methods of tillage, preparing beds, sowing seeds, caring for plants. He also reads books by leading organic gardeners in England and America.

I, as well as S. M. Korolkova, not a slave to her personal plot, but I love NOT (scientific organization of labor), when quantity and quality, with due aesthetics, is achieved with minimal labor and real costs (article by N. Aleksandrova in the same issue "The prize has been working all summer" - continuous NOT - from planning a vegetable garden and an assortment of crops to operating the prize itself). And, having the experience of 10 years of work on a plot of 6 acres, I believe that many statements of S. M. Korolkova require substantial clarification.

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Soil preparation

Having dug up potatoes, I, too, would not have dug up the soil if my soil on the site was like that of Korolkova: deeply humified, real black soil (I saw in the TV show "Advice to Gardeners" as S. M. Korolkova in such soil (soil-dream) stuck a currant twig.

But since the soil under my potatoes is worse than in the beds, and much worse than in greenhouses, I also dig it up because:

- when harvesting potatoes together, you involuntarily trample part of the soil (and quite significantly);

- when re-digging, you select all the potatoes that were accidentally left behind. This should be done not out of greed, but to eliminate the centers of wintering of the wireworm - enemy number 2 of the potato. And when you dig again, you find and destroy the wireworm itself twice as much. At the same time, you remove the rhizomes of weeds that were missed when digging potatoes.

- v (if, fortunately, you have the opportunity to get it) it is better to do it for the autumn digging. Lime (dolomite) for soil deoxidation - too.

I also use green manure - winter rye to improve the soil. And for its sowing, it is necessary to perform a number of agrochemical methods:

- apply at least a little fertilizer, otherwise the winter rye will take out more nutrients from the soil than it will later give.

- it is better to put the seeds into the soil: they will germinate faster, the "friends of the garden" will peck less.

Therefore, I do this: I dig with a shovel (you can use a mechanical cultivator) an area from under the potatoes about three meters wide (arm length + rake handle length). I select the roots of the weeds and destroy the wireworm that comes across. I spread fertilizers (dolomite, ammophos). Standing on the part of the plot that has not been dug, I level the dug part with a rake, and then scatter the seeds of winter rye. Then I cover the seeds with a rake (I level the surface to an evenness acceptable to the eyes). Then I repeat the operation until the entire potato site is completely digged.

As a result, after a week, the entire, almost perfectly flat, area is covered with a dense emerald green carpet, almost like an English lawn. And since there is often a good autumn almost until the beginning of November, this type of site against the background of yellow foliage of the forest, garden is a real delight and a source of good mood, compensation for not being too lazy to dig up the site, not to mention the above benefits.

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When spring comes

I, too, am in no hurry to dig up the plot, and by mid-May, winter rye grows 50-70 cm high, forming clumps of roots with a fist. It is problematic to use (as SM Korolkova suggests) a manual cultivator without spending a lot of time, and most importantly, effort.

Then she says: "When the potatoes begin to sprout - take a rake in your hands and slightly loosen the soil between the rows, then …" I will continue: with your rake teeth you will pull out the roots of winter rye (fist-sized) from the ground. (And in the rows it is also necessary, because with a distance of 25 cm between the shoots of potatoes, there will also be a lot of weeds.)

And this must be done very slowly and carefully so that these lumps, which have sunk into the rake teeth, do not damage the potato sprouts. Believe me, you will not get any pleasure from the work itself or from the type of site after this operation.

Moreover, the problem of the roots of winter rye, which remained on the surface and did not rot, will remain during the hilling of potatoes.

Having fucked up someone else's, you must offer your own. My method is called "under the rake" or in the furrow. On the day of planting potatoes, measuring 75 cm from the edge of the plot, I use a shovel to cut the stalks of winter rye, the longest ruble (already on the ground) into even smaller pieces. Then I dig it with a shovel (you can use a mechanical cultivator) onto the bayonet of the shovel, trying to close up the lumps of winter rye roots deeper. After the autumn digging, it is not so hard.

Then I dig a furrow 2/3 deep of a shovel bayonet along the entire length. With a rake I throw into it clods of winter rye roots, which are on the surface, mixed with the earth. It turns out a loose litter, on which I put seed potatoes, I spray a tablespoon of ash on top. Then with a rake, breaking all large clods of earth, I cover the potatoes with fluffy earth. If again lumps of winter rye roots come across, then I throw them between the potatoes. Finally I level the entire strip of 70 cm under the general level.

And so the entire site as long as possible. If he could not do everything, then winter rye for seeds will grow in the remaining space.

A neighbor plants potatoes under a shovel. When there is time, he mows the winter rye. Digs up the entire area with a shovel and rakes it up. All stalks, roots of winter rye, which were at the top, are raked with a rake and transferred to the compost heap. Then his wife, when she has time, digs holes with a scoop (along the cord) and plants potatoes.

A separate objection to the advisability of planting beans around the potato. First, some articles suggest that beans are detrimental to potato yields.

Secondly, having planted the beans to a depth of 6-8 cm (the optimal planting depth for potatoes is usually 8-10 cm, and for some it is even more), we just bury 1/3 of the beans in the ground at once, because they will not sprout from that depth.

Thirdly, as soon as potato tops and weeds appear, and the bean sprouts have not yet appeared, you will loosen the soil with a rake and destroy (break off) another 1/3 of the beans.

Fourth, with the first and second hilling, you will add beans and potatoes each time. Potatoes are good, but beans?

Then the tops of the potato will close together, blocking out all the light to the surviving beans. Further - even worse, tk. beans are the favorite habitat of aphids, and this is an additional source of attention and subtraction of time from "… admiring the delights of the surrounding nature."

Fucking someone else's, I offer my own. I plant beans around the perimeter (every 5 cm) of the entire potato patch. Potato processing does not interfere with the growth of the beans. The beans are an excellent approach, you can water, feed, spray against aphids, easy to get and enjoy the harvest, collect seeds. And they look aesthetically pleasing. And most importantly, the phrases "beans will be a good nitrogen fertilization and at the same time they will be able to protect your site from moles" is nothing more than an unsubstantiated phrase wandering from one publication to another.

Moles are insectivorous animals that feed on worms, beetle larvae, etc., and are indifferent to plant roots, including potatoes. Moreover, with a large lunge of beans when sowing around a potato, with the above-described cataclysms, there is always a passage for them. If S. M. Korolkova confuses moles with water rats, the latter can really spoil the planting of potatoes, but the beans are powerless against them.

Now about nitrogen feeding with beans. Bean roots do produce nitrogen, but only for themselves, and not around themselves in a 10 cm radius (where the potato roots will be). If potatoes, like a sow thistle, could penetrate the roots of beans with their roots, then yes. But in life, such properties are not observed for potatoes. Consequently, nitrogen from beans can pass into the soil only after the beans (roots, stems, leaves) fall into the ground and rot (Moreover, from 1 m² of beans - 15-20 g of nitrogen. And from two bobbins around a potato ?!). And this will be a nitrogen fertilization obviously not for the potatoes that were planted by S. M. Korolkova together with the beans.