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Vegetable Gardening

Are all manures bad for potatoes?

15 years ago

I'm getting ready to plant potatoes and I'm wondering if all manures are bad for fertilizing potatoes or is it only certain types of manure? The danger is scab right?

What if the manure is placed several inches below the seed potato where the potato plant roots will reach it but where the tubers should form well above the manure? Might that work? I have a good source of llama manure (a non-hot manure) and my idea was to dig holes and put the llama manure in the bottom of the whole then cover it with leaf compost and then just lay the seed potato on top and cover it with moist sawdust. The idea being that the plant would set the tubers in the sawdust well above the manure while the fibrous roots would reach downward through the leaf compost and eventually into the llama manure.

What do you think? Might this be a safe way to use the manure while avoiding scab?

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Comments (3)

digdirt2
15 years ago
Fresh manures, yes. But well composted and aged manures, which are the only kind one should use in the vegetable garden anyway, don't pose nearly as much of a problem unless your soil is already alkaline. Do you know your soil pH? It is the soil pH that encourages the scab, not the manure itself, and composted manures have reverted to a more neutral pH.

Personally, I would also be hesitant to use the sawdust. Sawdust is high carbon and as it decomposes it ties up nitrogen in the soil that would better be used by the plants. That isn't as much of a problem - nitrogen binding - when it is used as mulch, but if worked in below soil level it could be a source of problems.

If your llama manure is well composted/aged for 6 months, then why not just work it into the soil in other parts of the garden where it can be very beneficial to nitrogen lovers where scab isn't a problem?

Dave
steve22802
Original Author
15 years ago
I sent off a soil sample to be tested several years ago when I was reseeding my lawn and the report said the pH was 7.6. There are limestone rock outcrops visible in several places in my backyard (and around the whole county) so I guess that makes sense. The report recommended adding horticultural sulfur before seeding the new lawn.

I've read about people having good results using sawdust as a mulch (not a soil amendment) for potatoes so I'm going to give that a try this year. My native soil is clay so it's not the so good for tuber formation. As I understand it most of the true feeder roots for the potato plant go downwards looking for nutrients while the tubers are formed at the ends of stolons that grow outward from the part of the stem that is below the soil level and thus the potatoes end up in a circle at about the same level as the seed potato or even a little higher hence the need to hill potatoes to keep the tubers from turning green. So it seems that there is little need for nutrient rich soil above the seed potato and a lightweight mulch like sawdust, leaves or straw will keep the potatoes clean and easy to harvest and maybe even have less scab than they would if they were formed in soil.

Here is a link that might be useful: Botany of the Potato Plant
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I am out of control with potatoes this year. I have them planted in rai.sed beds, old garbage cans, old whisky barrels, wire clothes hampers, black plastic pots and I too am trying the black fabric s.mart (potato) bags for the first time. You can get seed potatoes at nurseries or big box stores. There is no end to the varieties available at my area stores. I always plant small whole potatoes...no cutting. For soil I use my oak leaf mold, peat moss, sandy topsoil and any good potting soil mixed together. You can add bone meal before you plant. Anything with PH or Phosphorous that is for root crops or bulbs. You don't want to add N or Nitrogen since this will make for big plants but not such a big crop underground and this is where the manure warning probably comes from or maybe it has to do with the scab disease problem (which I think is actually more of a concern for commercial farmers and not so much for hobby gardeners like us). And as an aside, I think those s.mart bags are pretty neat and probably useful for plants other than potatoes. They come in quite a range of sizes. The bags are a little cheaper if you order direct from the maker rather than through a gar.den supply place. And I'm pretty proud that I only have one more seed potato left to plant. The problem is finding a place for it. I mean I am full up. (periods placed within certain words to foil Bing)
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Whew.... You couldn't ask something simple like a 15-part- question.... In no particular order: I would be happier about it all if the area had a year and a half instead of just six months for all the old manure to decompose, even in your warm coastal area. But that doesn't necessarily make it a big problem. The flooded/saturated soil is a big problem. Dig trenches around the beds to help the water drain. Trench out channels to get the water heading out of the garden. Get the excess water drained out of there! It is the most important part of the solution. The excess water is making worse the problems of the mostly aged animal waste. Stop using vinegar on the weeds! Makes it worse, in your situation. Now for the goodish news.... If the plants look healthy, and the fruits develop normally, and the excess water has been drained away, I would be fine with eating the veggies that are harvested above-ground, as long as they are washed, just as you would with grocery-store veggies. I wouldn't be happy with root vegetables from this ground for at least another year.
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pnbrown
15 years ago
Leaf mold is a good fertilizer for potatoes, and as a mulch.

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