A Reason For Hilling

[AlittleSalt]

A few threads down are pictures on the "Escaped Potato" thread. I learned a lot from that volunteer potato. I'll explain...

Online, you can read all kinds of info on why some people hill-up dirt around their potato plants. You can also read why not to, and how hilling potatoes has been debunked. Often times, seeing for yourself is the best way to learn.

In the escaped potato thread, I tried it out. I shoveled a contractor's wheelbarrow of dirt around a potato plant. In 4 days, it grew 6 inches. Sense then, we had a hail storm that flattened that plant and all the potatoes in our garden (80+ plants) I thought about how hilling the dirt made that volunteer plant grow.

Yesterday, I put more dirt on that volunteer plant and on 20 feet of the potatoes in the garden. This morning, the ones I hilled look perky - it's almost like the storm never happened. The plants I didn't hill-up still look like they went through a hail storm. Below, are pictures taken with a Nintendo DS - It takes good up-close pictures, but landscape pictures don't look so good. The first picture is of plants without hilling - It shows some hail damage. The second picture shows plants I hilled-up yesterday. The third picture is of that volunteer potato plant - before adding more dirt, that plant looked dead.

I have no idea if hilling will make the plants produce more potatoes or not, but it's easy to see that in this case, there is a reason for hilling.