Compost Hilling Potatoes

June 24th 2015

Hello Farmers and Gardeners!

A row of potatoes, pre-hilling

The same row of potatoes, post-hilling

So last year I made a post about hilling potatoes. Hilling potatoes yields more potatoes per plant, keeps weeds down so less weeding, and stops the potatoes from widening and getting all over the place, tricking them into growing higher instead. So hilling is advantageous for many reasons, but there are many ways to do it. My last post about it just involved using dirt. We’ve also used straw and compost to hill, and they are very different techniques. As you may have guessed from the title, this year we’ve been hilling with compost, and that’s what I want to explain in this post.

For this you’ll need a flat hoe, a wheelbarrow, a shovel, and compost (obviously.) Once your potatoes have grown up a foot or so, you can hill them, we’ve been hilling our potatoes that went in the ground in late April for the last 3 or so weeks, so most potatoes don’t require much more than a month or so of growing. We always do make sure to weed each row of potatoes right before we mulch them this way, and we mow the paths between the rows to make it easier for us as well.

The growing point-or the place where the stem will continue rising, is at the convergence of the highest set of branches on any plant, right here on potatoes. This is the part that it's important to never block from the sun.

The growing point, which is the place where the stem will continue rising, is at the convergence of the highest set of branches on any plant, right here on potatoes. This is the part that it’s important to never block from the sun.

First thing you do is fill a wheelbarrow with compost, and dump it right next to your potatoes. It’s ok if it get’s right on the plants, as that is the point of hilling them. Once your potatoes are nice and strong, you can pile the compost 6-8 inches or higher, as long as you don’t cover the growing point on each plant (pictured.) After you’ve poured it on, you can take your flat hoe and kind of rake the compost into place, covering the bottom branches of each plant as best you can.

: Sarah, dropping the compost right up against the plant. The closer you get at this step, the less time you have to waste later!

: The plants can get pretty nestled in, potatoes are hardy and covering them is the point of this method!

: Me, pulling the compost into place with a hoe. This is one of the few jobs on the farm that actually uses a traditional flat hoe.

After that, you leave the potatoes as they are. They will grow up very happily and yield many delicious spuds for you. Happy Farming!

– Joe Ingrao, Summer 2015 EXCEL Scholar

Potato Hilling

Potatoes before hilling

Shovel attachment for Wheel Hoe

So, potatoes are really easy to get into the ground, but what about ways to get them to produce more potatoes per plant? A good and simple answer to this is to do what is called Hilling to your potatoes.

You start with your lovely potato plants, after they’ve grown to be at least a foot above the ground as shown in the before picture.

You take a wheel hoe, a handy dandy invention that’s been around a long time that Sarah recommends as one of the two most important tools for a small farm, and you attach a shovel-looking attachment.

You then run your wheel hoe with the shovel attachment alongside your potato rows, pushing the dirt up onto the potato plants. Your potatoes will then look something like ours do in the during picture.

Potatoes during hilling

Potatoes after hilling

The dirt should have been driven up around some of the bottom leaves of the potato plant. This won’t hurt the plant as long as it’s not completely buried. It will trick the plant into thinking that it must grow taller to get the same amount of sun, instead of growing wider as it does normally. Growing taller makes the plants store more starch in their roots, i.e., grow more and bigger potatoes.

To finish the process, you’ll want to take a regular old hoe and pull the dirt that was pushed up by your wheel hoe and bring it in closer to the plant, covering the first few layers of leaves. It’s safe to cover up until almost the very top, as long as at least the highest layer of leaves is revealed, but we just covered up the bottoms. You can see our finished product in our after picture.

-Joe Ingrao, Excel Scholar Summer 2014

Potato Planting

Potatoes have eyes. I don’t know why people started calling the tentacle-like appendages that seed potatoes have growing from them eyes, but that’s what they’re called. Most people know that potatoes are the root of a plant (a nightshade plant, the leaves and flowers are poisonous) but not as many know that the beginnings of their extended root structures are these noodley ‘eyes.’

Potato Eyes

To ready potatoes to be planted, you take seed potatoes–potatoes that still have eyes–and cut them usually in half, to pieces no smaller than 3oz. or about the size of an egg. Any potato that’s already around that size need not be cut. And each seed needs to still have developed eyes on it or it will not grow.

You need to have tilled land with 3 foot wide beds separated by 1 foot paths. You take a wheel hoe with a shovel like attachment and run it right in the middle of your beds, making a V in the ground. Then, you simply put potatoes in this V about a foot apart and then close the V back up, watering the potatoes a bit afterward to help them grow. It’s that simple! At LaFarm, we make sure our potatoes are well weeded until the plants are tall enough to lay down straw around without blocking out the potato plant, maybe around 10-12 in. tall.

-Joe Ingrao, Excel Scholar 2014

Late Blight-Beware!!

Hey everyone,

Please check out these websites for more information on this disease that could be effecting your tomatoes and potatoes. Please watch your plants carefully, as this could easily spread around to other plots!

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