Bare soil overwinter

[alldigging]

Its my intention to grow my spuds in it next year as they are very good at breaking down the soil structure,

The act of preparing the soil, earthing up through the season and then digging up the spuds is what does the hard work.

You can put spuds on the soil and cover them in a straw mulch and they'll grow. Apparently.

[Kaiya]

I agree - spuds alone don't break up the soil. I scraped out little hollows in hard soil this year, planted seed potatoes, and at the end of the year I had hard little hollows filled with potatoes. They made no effort to explore outside of their little beds.

[Mikey]

I've always found that on my heavy clay, the soil digs much easier after the potatoes than it does with all other veg. I can appreciate the act of earthing up does give you extra loose soil, but I tend to top dress with grass clippings.

[Two_Sheds]

You can put spuds on the soil and cover them in a straw mulch and they'll grow. Apparently.

Indeed they do: it's the way I do it. Except I don't use straw, I use newspapers, grass clippings and chopped weeds

[Two_Sheds]

I never, ever, ever leave soil bare

I see this garden on my walk every morning. It's tended by an Olde Boye, who removes every scrap of old foliage at the end of summer, digs the ground and then leaves it bare until spring.
I don't see any evidence of mulches being added, ever.

Look at how far the soil level has dropped, after so many years of having everything removed, nothing added in the way of mulches or compost. Bare soil like this will be lost to winter rains & winds, as it gets swept off the ground and onto roads & paths, and down drains.

The soil is a good 4 to 5 inches lower than the lawn. At one point they would have been level.


(this is the only bit I could discretely photograph, because he was lurking in the front window at the time)