A Reason For Hilling
 

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.

My Dad taught me to always hill potatoes, and all the gardens I have grown I have been lucky enough to get a lot of potatoes out of what I had planted. I can't imagine growing potatoes without hills :)

Yours look very happy!

My uncle always hilled his potatoes, but I never knew why until now. Salt thats a cool idea with the DS!

Hilling potaoes is an enormous amount of work if you have any quantity of them in the garden... That said, I have 50 pounds that I planted... the thought of hilling that many isnt high on my priority list, but it must be done. Yesterday my dear son went nd picked up a BCS tiller for me that we found on craigslist... I think doing my potatoes this year will be much easier. I'll make a better effort at least and this gives me a little more incentive to keep at it.

Two weeks later - The first picture is hilled (The flower is a morning glory attacking - lol) The second picture are the three plants we didn't hill.

[QUOTE=AlittleSalt;474119]Two weeks later - The first picture is hilled (The flower is a morning glory attacking - lol) The second picture are the three plants we didn't hill.[/QUOTE]

There is definitely a difference between them.

[QUOTE=clkeiper;474071]Hilling potaoes is an enormous amount of work if you have any quantity of them in the garden... That said, I have 50 pounds that I planted... the thought of hilling that many isnt high on my priority list, but it must be done. Yesterday my dear son went nd picked up a BCS tiller for me that we found on craigslist... I think doing my potatoes this year will be much easier. I'll make a better effort at least and this gives me a little more incentive to keep at it.[/QUOTE]

I was going to suggest a hilling plow.:lol:

Worth

My grandpa uses an old Farmall Cub tractor. It has an adjustable disk underneath it to throw up ridges. After the potatoes have come up and grown a little, he will sometimes go over them again and throw more dirt on them. He does the same with onions, to keep the tops of the onion bulbs from getting sun burned.

The main reason hilling is usually necessary, is to cover the potatoes with enough soil so they do not produce solanine. Sunlight on tubers results in solanine production in the tubers (green color).

i never grew potatoes, this year i have 9 4ft x10ft raised beds. one of those is dedicated to potatoes. and while these looked great early as of late i have been loosing plants. It is not early blight, soft rot, black leg... i think it may be Vericullium Wilt which sucks. I talked to Johnnys Selected seeds and they asked me to have samples tested asap. not happy

[QUOTE=Worth1;474195]I was going to suggest a hilling plow.:lol:

Worth[/QUOTE]

Maybe I will get one for the tiller... later. this week I used a 4 tined rake thing (my fil had it in his garage and snagged it. He will never use it again I am sure). I was tired after I tilled and hilled... more like exhausted. There is bind weed in the area so I was trying to get as much dug and pulled as I could.

Next year, I'm going to plant potatoes 6 inches deep as usual, but instead of waiting until the plants come up - I will have already put the soil for hilling a foot away from the rows. It would be much easier this way. All I will have to do is rake the soil over to where it needs to be.

[QUOTE=AlittleSalt;477198]Next year, I'm going to plant potatoes 6 inches deep as usual, but instead of waiting until the plants come up - I will have already put the soil for hilling a foot away from the rows. It would be much easier this way. All I will have to do is rake the soil over to where it needs to be.[/QUOTE]

For many years I grew a 250 ft row of potatoes, sometimes I wonder why I did that especially in late Fall when the wind was from the north and it was more than just chilly out there.

But my mother loved home grown potatoes, she had her lady friends who would come in summer, they'd sit on the front porch and gossip, but the main reason they were there is b'c mom insisted that I had plenty of fresh veggies for them to take home, and yes, also lots of tomatoes.

When I'd dig the potatoes in the Fall she'd call them to come and get potatoes.

All to say that I would move down that long row with a large hoe and stepping sideways, hoe down about 6 inches and pull the soil to the edge. When the cut pieces spouted I'd let them grow up to maybe a few inches above level, then pull some soil over them, let them grow a bit more, pull more soil over them, repeat until no free soil was left.

And I always got excellent production, but that also depended on the specific varieties that I was growing.

So essentially I was doing what you are doing although I allowed the plants to get a bit higher before starting to add soil.

Of course where I am now and considering my physical limitations and knowing that Freda does all my gardening for me all I've ever grown is different varieties of fingerlings in pots.

Yes, I still love fresh potatoes. For a few years a woman whose parents owned THE largest potato farm here, actually many acres in different areas would bring me the small new potatoes, which I loved. Her name is Sandy and she's married to one of the sons whose parents built my wonderful home here.

I just decided to see if his obit was online since I just read it in the AM paper and will link to it so you can see how much he was recognized for his potato knowledge.His daughter Sandy was also mentioned as being the wife of Jon McClellan, and it was the elder McClellans who had my home built.

The Funeral Home mentioned has McClellan as part of the name but that was Jon's brother Greg, who died two years ago from complications due to Chrons disease.

This part of upstate NY has many large potato farms and some of the varieties they developed are hard to get or are now extinct.

[url]http://poststar.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/royce-m-atwater/article_82dd49d4-0996-11e5-a9e2-078f897be2e8.html[/url]

Carolyn

I have to settle for heavy mulch because the rows are too close together. Shredded leaves and this year coffee chaff above that. It seems to work well but wider spaced rows would be nice.

Not sure hill the potato works, but to make sure that it doesn't I did mound mine, here is the video : [URL]https://youtu.be/wSG07lJ-4RU[/URL] .

This is new pictures to make viewing easier.
[URL]http://www.durgan.org/URL/?ZFZLX[/URL]
[URL]http://www.durgan.org/URL/?QHBIN[/URL] 21 August 2009 How a Potato Plant Grows
There is a great deal of information on the Internet about growing potatoes in tires, boxes and indicating that large quantities of new tubers can be produced with high vertical hilling. The Seattle Times consistently propagates this view and never produces meaningful pictures indicating such.The view propagated is that potatoes grow from branches all along the main stalk. This is utter nonsense, as my pictures indicate. New tubers are formed around the seed potato and always slightly above it. Another point to take into consideration is the vegetation serves the purpose of supplying food to produce the desired tubers. Reducing this surface area by too high hilling must detract from the food producing process. The quantity and quality of potatoes per plant is or prime interest to a home grower. Experience indicates that from any one plant from four to eight pounds of various sized tubers should be produced. I consider anything under four pounds per plant to be an inferior crop.



My potato growing test box was opened today. The pictures speak for themselves. Clearly there is no advantage in carrying out excessive hilling when growing potatoes. [B]The purpose of hilling is to insure the tubers are covered, since light affects potatoes producing a green appearance, which is an indication of solanine, which is harmful if ingested in large quantities.[/B] For comparison one Pontiac Red was dug in the same row, which was almost identical to the test box potato in appearance.
[IMG]http://www.durgan.org/2011/January%202011/26%20January%202011%20How%20a%20Potato%20Plant%20Grows/HTML/21%20august%202009%20how%20potatoes%20grow%20045_std.jpg[/IMG]

Here we go again...

[QUOTE]This is utter nonsense[/QUOTE]Not true, though you are correct about the majority of commercial potato lines. They do not have the correct genetics to grow tubers off the stem. They have been bred to grow tubers only in one location, to make mechanical harvesting simple.

Durgan, all your experiment shows, is that the potatoes you tried this with do not have the trait needed. If you would like to retry this with a different variety of potato with this trait, I will see what I can do to have someone in Canada get some to you.

Regardless of this, I would agree with you, that to date, with the majority of varieties of potato, it is fairly conclusive that it is unrealistic to expect a more favorite yield in ANY container, compared to growing a potato in the ground. Perhaps that may someday change with further breeding, and selection in TPS growouts bred for container growth. Growing in the ground will nearly always give you a higher yield, especially if you are amending your soils and fertilizing in a similar method to what Durgan uses.

See these two posts for my documentation on a 35" tall bin with Papa Chonca, a chilean landrace potato.

[URL]http://tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=30203&page=3[/URL]
[URL]http://tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=33584[/URL]

Video documentation of the reveal is in these video links I uploaded to youtube last year.

[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZzy3EgU3fw"]Part 1[/URL]
[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-peGjsY9M8"]Part 2[/URL]
[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOl9R1WyQCc"]Part 3[/URL]
[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3mtzPZUAOA"]Part 4[/URL]
[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkx1gLk3_uQ"]Part 5[/URL]

Edit/Addition:

I am growing two different varieties this year, but have not documented them as well. Too busy with other projects.

2013 varieties grown in bins were 'Purple Peruvian' and 'Purple Viking'. PP yield was mediocre, PV yield was terrible. PV set potatoes all in a single location.
2014 varieties grown in bins were "CIP396286-7' and 'Papa Chonca'. Both grew, but yields were lower than when grown in the ground.
2015 varieties currently being grown in bins are 'Doty Todd' and 'Big Dog'

For further reading on the genetics of cultivated potatoes, see this:

[URL]http://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/vc221/potato/potsum1rd.html[/URL]

One interesting thing it notes that pertains to the topic here, is that Solanum tuberosum 'tuberosum', which the vast majority of cultivated potatoes in North America and Europe are descended from, has short stolons vs S. tuberosum 'andigena', which has long stolons. The andigena descended potatoes, as well as S. stenotonum and S. phureja species, all have traits better suited to container growth, than tuberosum.

[QUOTE][I]tuberosum[/I] [I]andigena[/I]
Long days short days
Less dissected leaves wider leaflets narrower, more numerous leaflets
Arched lvs, set at wider angle to the stem Lvs set at acute angle to stem, more dissected
Shorter stolons Longer stolons
Less pigmentation Often wide array of pigmentation
[/QUOTE]

"I am growing two different varieties this year, but have not documented them as well. Too busy with other projects."

Apparently every perpetrator of the tree potato growing dogma has the same excuse. Long stolons do not translate into vertical potatoes from what I have observed. Your pictures are not convincing of anything positive.

One would imagine that at least one well documented case of vertical potatoes would appear on the internet. There is not one demonstration of such.

My documentation of how a potato grows is absolutely fool proof. The other potatoes grown in my garden reflect no off stem formation of potatoes with normal hilling.

Psuedo vertical growing of potatoes reminds me of the craze a few years ago about growing upside-down tomatoes. The stores were even selling planters . Nary a one in sight today.

[QUOTE]My documentation of how a potato grows is absolutely fool proof. The other potatoes grown in my garden reflect no off stem formation of potatoes with normal hilling. [/QUOTE]And like I and others have said several times in the past, you are growing the wrong types of potatoes (Solanum tubersom 'tuberosum') for this type of test. You will need to test it with S. phureja, S. stenotonum, or S. tuberosum 'andigena' potatoes. The offer is there if you want to try. I am sure I can find someone in Canada to send you some to try next year. I live in the US and would be unable to send any to you without a lot of red tape and import/export hassles, otherwise I would do so.

I already did my homework and presented convincing proof of how a potato plant grows.

The perpetrators of the vertical branch growing myth need to present evidence, which regardless of the type of potato simple does not exist IMO.

A Google produces phoney videos not even mentioning that a unicorn variety of potato need be used.

If I were interested in growing potatoes in a box, and I am not, but if I were, I'd use more seed pieces. Probably in multiple layers as I filled the box. Possibly even transplanting seed pieces that had a head start in pots. Maybe even topped off with some pull sprouts.

Isn't the idea is to get a box full of potatoes, not how many potatoes one seed piece can produce?


On topic: I start my potatoes in a trench and hill as much as I can to prevent greening.

jon_dear, Welcome to Tomatoville.

I agree. Growing potatoes in a box is something new-to-me.

I started this thread because I was trying to save potato plants after a bad storm. Hilling them did help keep them growing. We got potatoes when we otherwise wouldn't have without hilling. The potatoes responded well. No, they did not produce extra potatoes, but they produced under way too much rain and storms.

After all, it was, "A Reason For Hilling".

Nathan, I admire your ability to make patient and even-handed replies to overly provocative and uninformed posters.

[QUOTE=salix;485089]Nathan, I admire your ability to make patient and even-handed replies to overly provocative and uninformed posters.[/QUOTE]

And the amazing ability to cling to completely shattered views, still attempting to defend the indefensible.
[B]Potatoes do not grown new tubers along the stem. REPEAT AFTER ME[/B].

[QUOTE][B]Potatoes do not grown new tubers along the stem[/B][/QUOTE]Yes they do. Many do, just not the ones you have grown, nor most that are commercial varieties. Solanum tuberosum ssp andigena, S. phureja, S. stenotonum and many wild potato species do.

Here's one that likely IS from a commercial variety.

[IMG]http://www.grit.com/~/media/Images/GRT/Editorial/Blogs/Paul/Growing%20Potatoes%20101%20Preparing%20to%20Plant%20Potatoes/wholetater.jpg?la=en[/IMG]

I don't need to keep reposting the other evidence. There are now several threads/posts on this forum detailing photos, videos and other published material from researchers who have detailed these facts.

Including the two threads I linked to yesterday, there are now at least 4 threads where you have tried picking fights over this issue. I do not mind disagreement, nor do I mind showing my shortcomings and lack of knowledge in many areas. This however, is not one of them. There have been numerous people involved in these discussions, including breeders and growers, some having done so for 50+ years, growing more potato varieties and species than can likely be written. The body of evidence is overwhelming to those with open minds. Here are two more of these in addition to those linked to above. I had hoped that you might be open minded enough to give your experiment another try with varieties that are better suited to this. I find it disappointing that you so easily dismiss the offer.

[URL]http://tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=33584[/URL]

[URL]http://tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=28185[/URL]

Duh.

Durgan

Durgan, you are being rude and unwilling to hear about other varieties other than the commercial ones available to most of us in this day and age. Take him up on his offer of seeds and either disprove or prove yours or his experiment, but to keep disagreeing and making rude replies causes us to skip your replies ans dismiss your many years of knowledge of growing in the garden. your replies make you sound like a petty little child. I am sur eyou have much to offer from your many years of work but I am not willing to ask you for being afraid of you making fun or being rude and making me feel stupid. That is not what this is all about. We are here to learn and help on another.

I proved my premise without equivocation. If you disagree present your proof. The onus is not on me.The present photos on this thread verge on being silly and are basically meaningless. If you cannot see this then it is your preception problem and I take no responsibility or concern about pointing this out. BS is BS wherever it is encountered.