<p>Manure has long been recognized as a vital resource for improving crop yields. However, due to the inconvenience of application and high transportation costs in practical production, farmers tend to prefer chemical fertilizers, highlighting an urgent need to explore simplified and labor-saving manure application methods. Meanwhile, although the importance of combined application of organic and inorganic fertilizers has been extensively studied, most relevant research has been limited to spatial scales. Based on a 6-year field experiment, this study investigated the effects of inter-annual simplified clustered manure application (once every two years or once every three years) combined with different inter-annual inorganic fertilizer management patterns (uniform annual application or annual incremental application) on maize yield and agronomic traits. Over the entire experimental period, the treatment of clustered manure application biennial clustered manure + uniform inorganic fertilizer (2CM-U) significantly increased maize yield by 7.7% compared with the CK (uniform organic manure + uniform NPK). However, no significant yield difference was observed between the treatment of clustered manure application once every two years plus gradually increasing inorganic fertilizer (2CM-G) and CK (<i>F</i> = 3.696, <i>P</i> = 0.035). For clustered manure application once every three years, regardless of inorganic fertilizer management, no significant yield differences were found compared with CK (<i>P</i> &gt; 0.05). Nevertheless, the treatment with uniform inorganic fertilizer (3CM-U) significantly outperformed that with gradually increasing inorganic fertilizer (3CM-G) (<i>F</i> = 3.496, <i>P</i> = 0.041), and in the first year, the yield of 3CM-G was significantly lower than that of CK (<i>F</i> = 30.874, <i>P</i> &lt; 0.001). A comparison between inter-annual non-uniform clustered manure applications revealed that the yield of 2CM-U was significantly 13.5% higher than that of 3CM-G. In contrast, no significant differences were detected between 3CM-G, 2CM-G, 3CM-U, and CK (<i>F</i> = 3.955, <i>P</i> = 0.006). Regarding yield stability, the coefficient of variation (CV) of maize yield across the 6 years showed no significant differences among all treatments (<i>F</i> = 0.522, <i>P</i> = 0.722), indicating that clustered fertilization did not reduce yield stability. These findings suggest that implementing inter-annual clustered manure application strategies combined with optimized inorganic fertilizer management can effectively maintain or even increase maize yields while significantly reducing fertilization frequency. This approach holds strong potential for promotion and application in agricultural regions facing labor shortages or low mechanization levels.</p>