Should i hill potatoes

Hilling adds soil to the stems, encouraging stem growth and providing more sites for potatoes to form. Watering also stimulates the production of more tubers. When tuber formation begins supply 5 gallons per cubic yard High nitrogen also inhibits initiation. During this stage, leaf growth continues the plant gets bigger.

Hill again two or three weeks later and two more weeks after that, if the plant canopy has not already closed over, making access impossible. On a small scale, use a rake or standard hoe to pull soil up from the side of the row opposite to where you are standing.

If you are sharing the job, one person can work each side of the row at the same time. If you are alone, turn round when you get to the end of the row and work back up the same row.

You will damage your body by this distortion of your spine and shoulders! At the next scale up, use a rototiller with a hilling attachment, or perhaps a wheel hoe with a hiller, if your soil and stamina allows. Nowadays we use a tractor-mounted hiller that has disks turned inwards in pairs to ridge the soil. Not so! Any cleaning that takes place is a result of cultivation. As with many plants, the initial growth stage is the most critical time for weed control of potatoes.

As well as providing more stem length underground for potatoes to grow from, hilling in sunny weather can deal with lots of weeds in a timely way, especially if machine work is followed up by the crew passing through the field hoeing, as we do. Sun and wind kill the weeds quicker, giving them little chance to re-root. Organic mulches also reduce weeds. Potatoes later in life produce a closed leaf canopy that discourages more weeds from growing until the tops start to die.

Frost will kill potato leaves, but the plant underground is not killed and can quickly recover and grow more leaves. Most gardeners stop hilling their potatoes once the added soil is 6 to 8 inches deep, starting roughly a month into the growing season, but there's no hard-and-fast rule.

Most root vegetables, from carrots and parsnips to turnips and radishes, grow vertically downward. This has two important benefits. Secondly, as the tubers develop, they usually rise up through the dirt to get exposure to sunshine. This turns them green and promotes production of a toxic alkaloid, solanine, which — as Cornell University cautions — can be toxic if eaten in quantity.

A bit sneaky on our part, but fascinating to observe. This is also why you may notice different sized potatoes on your plants at harvest; the longer the underground stem was under the ground translates to larger potato size and your preceding hilling activites. Just loosen surrounding soil in the bed and pull up around the leaves and stems. Try to hill before the stems grow too long and start to flop over.

Potatoes need different amounts of water at different times in order to produce to the best of their ability. Generally, potatoes need between inches of water per week; this could be provided by rain events or you to make up the difference. Count the days from planting to figure out target harvest dates per potato variety. You can always dig around a bit to see how things are coming along. Generally, new potatoes will be present by day 60; they will be small and fragile.

Most varieties will have good-sized tubers that are ready to harvest by 90 days. In the Southeast, soils get too hot in the summer to grow great potatoes. Varieties with DTM beyond days is not advisable. Shoot to have all your taters up by the end of July at the latest for best quality.

If you are growing on a small-scale, nothing is more rewarding than digging up your potato crop by hand. A digging fork or a broad fork work very well. Start along the far edges of your bed so not to skewer your taters. Loosen soil around the mound and unearth your beauties. Let potatoes dry off on the bed top for no more than 30 minutes or so before collecting them gently into boxes or bins. Skins will be fragile and easily damaged at this point.

Consider collecting your potatoes into the bins or boxes you intend to store them in to minimize the number of times you have to handle them. Also consider grading them in the field into various sizes before boxing them; smaller potatoes will dehydrate sooner than larger ones; having them graded makes it easy use the ones that will not hold very long first. Store all potatoes in a cool dark place until you are ready to eat them or sell them.

Any green potatoes should be discarded. No green? No problem. Please log in with your username or email to continue. No account yet? Create an account. Edit this Article. We use cookies to make wikiHow great. By using our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Cookie Settings. Learn why people trust wikiHow. Download Article Explore this Article parts.

Tips and Warnings. Related Articles. Part 1. The purpose of hilling is to cover potato tubers as they start to poke out of the ground. Use a hoe to scoop dirt from between the rows. Start in the middle point between two rows of potato plants, and hoe the dirt towards one row first. You want the dirt to fill up around the plant as you do this. Keep going down the row, scooping dirt.

Do this until all potato plants have a good mound of dirt around them, then repeat for the other rows.