potato hilling?

I've read/heard about every conflicting idea/story/method on this that exists. I know "why" you do it , it is the specifics I need to know , like when to hill , do you bury them as they come up? , do you just hill up around the foliage , how many times? I've read about the 5 gal can method and they say every time you see it pushing through the soil to bury it w/2-3" of soil and do that 3 or 4 times. Do you really bury green leaves? These are planted in rows in pretty light but rich soil. How do the commercial farmers do it? Thanks in advance....I think. RB

If the soil is light, the potatos will stay under the surface cover with enough soil to cover any that are exposed. The sunlight can caust them to turn green where exposed, and that green is toxic and bitter. Jim

I never cover up the green foliage. I just pull the dirt up to cover the bottom of the stems up to the leaves when they are smaller. I would say the hills are about 6-8 inches tall when I quit making them taller. I then just make the hill wider. When we dig them the hill is usually about 12-16 inches wide and 6-10 inches tall. I usually just cultivate them at first. Then after they have good growth I hill them by hand. I just take a hoe and walk the row each way pulling the dirt up under the leaves.

My Grand Dad grew a bunch of them in old tires he would plant them in a single tire filled with dirt. Then as they grew taller he would add a car tire and fill it with dirt. He would do this until he had 4-5 tires stacked on top of each other. He just knocked the tires over when he went to dig them. All of the potatoes where usually above the ground in the tire stacks.

I find sunburn on potatoes than have too little soil cover.I use the sun burned ones for seed.They can burn even if you cant see them.

i worked for a potato guy for a few years. we would "hill" with the 6 row hiller when they were 3-6 inches tall,just once. he had alot so only got across them once. that tire thing sounds cool. i just replanted my potatos first time rotted?? and sumthing ate my peppers? i thought rabbits didnt eat peppers?

I never really hill mine. If I see spuds forming near the top I just add a small layer of dirt in that area - but no large hilling.

My in-laws said that friends of theirs, plant theirs in somewhat of a trench. Then when the plants come up they hill them with pete moss, so harvesting them is really easy. Thinking I will give that a try this year. Also easier to water them if needed as the trench will hold water.

Have also heard of people hilling them with a thick layer of straw to keep the sun off. Have never tried that though.

I don't hill mine per say. I plant in a shallow trench 6" or so and cover about half way. I can then flood the trenches to irrigate. About the time plants are 6-8" tall I run my Farmall Super C to cultivate and side dress. It gets the weeds and covers the rest of the way.

Way back many many moons ago it seamed like that was all i did was to cultivate and hill taters at my uncles place from the time i could reach the clutch pedal on a O C 3 Oil All Over with ft mount 2 row . The soil around his farm was sandy and back then just about everybody that was not milking cows were in the tater biz. Back then the only spray used was for BUGs and everything was cultivated . If we were not hilling and cultivating we were moving irrigation pipe. The hills were between 10 and 12 inches tall and about foot wide.

I just hilled mine this weekend.

When I plant them, I hoe a trench about a foot wide. I plant the seed potatoes in the bottom of that trench and fill the trench with loose oat straw.

I don't hill them until I'm sure the danger of a frost has passed. If we get a frost warning after the potatoes are up, I hill them, burying the weeds and potato plants and all. Getting the tops burned off by frost sets their growth back a lot, but getting buried doesn't seem to phase them a bit. If no frost comes, I wait until the potatoes are are nice and tall and just bury the weeds and leave the potato plants sticking out of the top of the hill. I'll hill them again(very lightly) in June in the process of weeding them. Then I cover the hills with grass clippings so that when the the vines start laying down, they stay out of the dirt which helps ward off the fungal blight.

The layer of straw is where they set most of the spuds so it's really easy to "steal" young potatoes without hurting the growing plants. You can just reach into the hill with your hand and grab dinner. When I dig them in the fall, you can barely tell there was ever any straw there to begin with.

I do not hill mine as such but I straw them. When they get up say 18 inches I pile straw up around them leaving about 6 or so inches sticking out and they keep on growing taller and as they do I just keep adding straw or hay or grass clippings

old ,since I already hilled the potatoes with soil,should I still go with your straw method?

You can and by doing the straw it will help keep the weeds from being a problem and also make the top bunch of taters easier to get at

Thanks for all the replies. I hand hilled them the first time the other day walking along the row with dirt shovel like a disc hiller. Couldn't bring myself to completely bury the foliage. Some that were just popping through , I just covered enough to bury any minute weeds. Will have my cult w/hillers ready for the second go-round. Thanks again.RB

commercially:

the closing disks on the potato planter leave a small hill. before the plants are up, this is "dragged off." i think the idea is that extra soil protects from a late freeze. but then you want to get it off to get the plants out of the ground earlier.

without herbicide: cultivate weekly for weed control until canopy closure. as the plants get bigger the cultivator shoes are widened out so as not to disrupt the root system. with herbicide, we would cultivate once to start throwing a hill and kill any weed escapes. that would be three rows of shoes on the cultivator (21 shoes altogether for a 4 row machine).

"hilling" would be as late as possible before the rows filled in. you don't want to be damaging the plants with the tractor or hiller, but if you run too early there will be enough time for weeds to germinate between the rows. the machine for this is just a cultivator with the front row of shoes removed, and the second row adjusted to leave as wide a space as possible. the second row would be "buzzard wing" shoes to throw more dirt. that's what we used anyway. some people use disk hillers. i'd guess the hill would be about 8-10" tall. basically as much soil as you can dig out of the tire track. the idea is to make sure the crop stays buried all season long.

in terms of burying green tissue: that is not the goal, but inevitably some lower leaves will get buried.

The purpose of hilling is to prevent sunburn. I hill mine when the plants are 6-10" tall with enough dirt to be sure no potatoes are exposed to the sun. I only have a few rows so I just do it with a hoe.