Want a mountain of potatoes? Well, that’s exactly what you need to do. Hilling potatoes is the process of mounding and heaping up soil to cover the stems of the potato plants with only the top parts visible to collect sunlight. This is usually done when the plant is about 6–8 inches high.
Why Hill Potatoes?
To yield a greater amount, and size of potatoes. Who doesn’t like the sound of that?
- The part of the potato plant that we eat, which we call potato tubers, is actually the stem that grows underground from small stems called stolons. Thus, the more soil covering up the stem, the more likely it is to shoot out more tubers. NOTE: If this is not done to your plants in the growing stage, then it will grow a lot of stems (above ground), leaves and flowers. Your plant is no longer focusing on establishing and growing potatoes. This means you will end up with “itty bitty” potatoes when it is time for harvesting.
To cover potato tubers, which protects the tubers from sunlight. But don’t plants need sunlight?
- While we do want our plant to get some sunlight, in particular the leaves, so it can carry out photosynthesis, the parts we intend on eating should not be exposed to it. So when we mound up the soil onto the stems, it prevents tubers from turning green and becoming bitter and toxic. Yikes, definitely hate the sound of that!
How to Hill Potatoes?
- Step 1: Pile the dirt by your plants.
- Step 2:Add extra soil around it if needed.
- Step 3:Clump up the soil to the stem, leaving only the top with the leaves visible to collect sunlight, but not the tuber itself.
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