Using spent potato foliage as mulch

[MrsCordial]

Like everyone else, I'm pulling up potatoes at a rate of knotts just now. As I have too many patches of bare earth in my veg patch (result of rather enthusiastic rotavating), I'm laying the potato foliage on the ground between areas of planting. I'm expecting it will help to reduce the earth drying out, and as it breaks down will add something to the soil.

Am I really barking up the wrong tree, risking disease or mildew or anything? Bit by bit I'm getting things planted in the bare patches and allowing weeds I eat such shepherd's purse, dandelions and heal-all to spread. I started off with a regimented rows of veg mentality, which left me with these bare patches in-between, then read Alys Fowler's The Edible Garden and was instantly converted to mixing it all up!

[Mikey]

Its fine to use the foliage as mulch in fact thats one of the reasons I grow potatoes in newly turned ground, as they help cover ground and suppress weeds.

[veggiechicken]

I'm a great fan of mixing it all up That's what Nature would do and you can't regiment Nature. Likewise, Nature makes leaves fall from trees onto the ground below and plants to shrivel and die in Autumn. Nobody rakes those up and tidies them into heaps - so why should we?
Complete waste of energy in my book

[MrsCordial]

Oh great, thanks. I'm very happy to follow my nose on the whole, but am blissfully ignorant of the received wisdom on planting and just wanted to make sure I wasn't guaranteeing wholesale crop blight or something!

[Mikey]

Its only blight foliage you don't want to lay on the ground or put in the compost for that matter. It will allow the fungus to remain in the soil if you do. Best to burn it.

[Feral007]

Yes, I just put all the foliage that isn't eaten back onto the garden beds, and mix everything up, and add flowering plants and smelly ones, onions, garlic, and smelly flowers. Otherwise it's an All you can eat Buffet for the insects. If they find one plant in a row of plants, they need look no further. I still have pests, but they have to work harder for their meals

[Two_Sheds]

I'm laying the potato foliage on the ground between areas of planting. ... it will help to reduce the earth drying out, and ... add something to the soil.

You're right, and that's what I do. All foliage (weeds, green manures, crops) get chopped up a bit then dropped on the soil

wanted to make sure I wasn't guaranteeing wholesale crop blight or something!

Blight doesn't survive on dead tissue, so your leaves aren't going to infect anything else, even if they did have blight spores on them. The spores would die with the leaves