Covering Potato Plants: How To Hill Up Potato Plants (2024)

FAQs

Covering Potato Plants: How To Hill Up Potato Plants? ›

Straw or other mulch can be used in place of soil, though make sure it is thick enough to cover the base of the plant well. Hilling

With the first hilling, I like to cover the vines up so that only the top leaves are exposed. This allows for a shallower second hilling done 2-3 weeks later with an additional 2-4 in of soil brought around the vines.

Cover up most of the foliage (perhaps 6 inches or so), leaving just the top part sticking up. Hilling helps to protect the growing tubers and encourages more growth. You don't want the tubers exposed to sunlight, or they'll turn green and bitter. And no one wants to eat green potatoes.

You can hill your potatoes 1-3 times per season/crop. 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. You should pull between 2”-6” new soil up around the plants each time you hill.

They are covered with soil or organic material, such as sphagnum peat moss, mulch, or straw and then watered deeply. In early spring, Mother Nature may do much of the watering.

Reasons for hilling may include: improved weed control, improved drainage, minimization of greening of tubers, and raising of soil temperatures. Proper management of each of these factors may result in an increase in quality and quantity of tuber yield.

Completely unhilled potatoes will still form some tubers, though the harvest may not be as impressive as those that have been through the hilling process. Dig after the stems have died back as you would hilled potatoes.

Mound the soil to a height of 3 to 6 inches and approximately 12 to 15 inches from the base of the plant. Use care to prevent damage to the plant roots, which may extend 8 to 12 inches from the base of the plant. Hilling maintains suitable soil cover for tubers as they expand.

Hilling may be done a few times a season. Check them every 2 to 3 weeks. Stop hilling when the plant is about 6 inches tall but before the potato plant blooms. Potatoes can be planted as soon as the soil can be easily worked.

The short answer is you do not want to prune your potato plants. Potatoes need to flower in order to produce potatoes below ground. The best practice is to allow the top growth to die back (naturally) before you harvest so that your potatoes grow to their largest size.

Can you use mulch to hill potatoes? ›

Then cover over with compost and a deep (8 inches or more) straw or alfalfa mulch or really any deep mulch that will be easy to shove aside when it's time to harvest. For me last year, this no-dig, deep-mulch method kind of worked. It worked in the sense that I got a whole lot of potatoes.

Provide 2 to 2.5 inches of water weekly, combining rain and irrigation, to support tuber bulking. Remember, consistent moisture is key to growing healthy potatoes with fewer defects. Adjust watering based on temperature and rainfall, and always keep an eye on soil moisture levels.

If you don't want to bother with hilling, plant your potatoes 8-9 inches deep. The downsides are: the potatoes take longer to sprout and your harvest might be smaller. Potatoes like slightly acidic soil (5.8-6.5 pH). Add fertilizer or composted manure for best results.

Magnesium. Magnesium is needed during tuber bulking and if supply is restricted tuber size and yield will both be reduced. Soils with a severe magnesium deficiency can reduce yields by up to 15%, in such cases regular applications of magnesium on an annual basis has achieved yield increases of 1 to 10% in trials.

Staking isn't just for tomatoes. Potato plants benefit from a bit of backup too. Use stakes or cages to keep them upright, especially as they grow taller and start to produce.

Completely unhilled potatoes will still form some tubers, though the harvest may not be as impressive as those that have been through the hilling process. Dig after the stems have died back as you would hilled potatoes.

The idea is to dig a trench for the seed potatoes and as they grow you fill in over them with soil from the adjacent hill. This leftover soil from digging the trenches is arranged along the trench and helps keep the plants moist initially and then encourages further root growth as the plants mature.