Hilling Potatoes

Potatoes before Hilling

Reading about the old Soviet Leader Nakita Khrushchev Is rather mind numbing – a lot of people died because of him.  The only thing I remember of him when I was a kid was when he was in the UN and took off his shoe, pounded his desk with it and shouted, “You Shut Upf! You Shut Upf!”  More recently I heard that he had complained in the 1960’s that he couldn’t find hardly anyone who knew how to grow potatoes.  

The disincentive through Soviet Collectivization had destroyed the passing on of valuable knowledge of simple things like growing potatoes.  I believe our own industrialized mega-farm agribusiness has accomplished the same thing.  Therefore, I grow potatoes not only for accessing the best tasting varieties of this organic, unsprayed, dietary mainstay, but to know How to grow them and the ability to “tell others also”. 

Heaping the soil around the potatoes is important for production.  I like to do mine when the plants are about 16 to 18 inches tall.  I feel it’s a fine line between allowing enough foliage to support good growth and disturbing extended roots already established by the plants.  If I hill too early, I bury too much foliage.  If I hill too late, I disturb baby spuds in the soil.  Maybe I'm just being picky but I always try for optimum production.

Some texts promote hilling twice.  Some say to hill when the flowers show up and the plants are full height.  My sandy soil tends to hill only so high and a second hilling isn’t usually successful so I prefer single hilling with my in between timing.  

With my soil, hilling is accomplished with my bow rake.  This is when a proper longer handle on a rake is most useful. In heavier soils or when I want to dig slightly into the path, I’ve used my 2 lb. grub hoe. 

Potatoes after Hilling

 The spuds run down the beds in a double row 24 inches apart.  From one path on one side of the bed I reach over the bed to the far path and rake the soil up against the far row of plants, burying the plants halfway.  Then I rake from the centre of the bed up the side of the closer row.  I do the same thing from the opposite path, reaching across the bed for the farther row and raking from the centre bed line for the closer row.

A bit closer view.

This is all very doable with the four foot wide bed.  A narrower bed couldn’t hold a double row of potatoes.  Any small weeds that are buried in the hilling are not coming back.  Later, the close mature canopy of the potato's foliage shades and slows future weed growth so that any weeding is minor and done by hand pulling whenever weeds are noticed while walking by.

One problem I have is my sandy soil erodes easily with watering and I must be gentle and gradual with my water-wanding.  Later in the season I must be aware of any exposed potatoes and quickly cover them by hand so they don’t turn green (and toxic).  These spuds usually show up while watering by hand and dredging muddy, eroded soil from the centre between the rows works quite well for covering them up without disturbing other roots. 

The novelty of growing spuds inside a stack of old rubber tires is cute but not practical.  Where does one find the soil to keep on adding as the plant grows taller?  One single plant can only place so much energy into potato production so why not use all that extra soil for more plants rather than one tall one?  What could be the toxicity of dust and chemicals from the tires?

Four foot wide beds with double rows of potatoes, hilled and well cared for in a good year will give me 50 lbs of spuds from a 50 square foot bed.  

This year I have a couple of test plots comparing different nitrogen sources and different seed suppliers.  I’m seeing differences already and will report as the crop matures. 

Let’s not be like Krushchev’s Soviets.  Potatoes might be ‘cheap’ right now, but I believe many more of us need to know how to grow potatoes for when they aren’t.

Happy Gardening.