Taties, compost, to dig or not

[Ritchiecore]

Hello all n00b allotmenteer here!

I have clay soil and have rough dug a large bed for my taties, now even after another good digging and composting/manuring the bed is comprised of hard clay bricks that would probably resist anything but a rotovator.

Should i:

plant my taties in it anyway to help break up the soil?

get more compost/manure/coarse grit in there? (if so how long, if at all, should i wait until planting said spuds?)

get the rotovator on it? (again is there a waiting period before i should plant?)

Thank you kindly in advance

[tomterm8]

If you have well rotted manure, what I would do is rotovate the entire plot several times. After you break up the soild, I would spread a thin layer of manure ( 1 - 2 inches) and grit on the top, and rotavate it in. Then I would repeat the process until you get a reasonable soil structure.

Once that was done, I would dig trenches along the plot, put a layer of compost or well rotted manure in the ditch, and plant the potato's anyway.

If the soil is as bad as you say, you might still not get great results on this crop, but at least the potato's should help to break the soil up.

With such hard clay soil, generally roughly digging it over into clumps in the autumn is a good idea, since the frost helps break it up. But that is not an option in this case because you will want to be able to use the garden.

By regularly putting in grit, sand and manure, you will eventually get a really nice vegetable bed, but it may take a few years.

If you are really athletic, you might want to look into double digging.

[Ritchiecore]

Thank you for that, i did double dig it originally just to improve the depth of soil before i hit solid clay but i brought a lot of clay to the top whilst doing so. A long and hard but worthwhile road awaits me. Thanks again.