Tater Questions
Forum Archives
Bill
Location: Washington, Western Cascade Foothills
Posted: Jun-15-2005 at 9:10pm
1)When your hilling potatoes do you stop piling dirt up at the first branch or is it kinda like when you replant tomaters that you bury the first branch?
2) I noticed that from my single bag of seed taters I have two distinctively different types of tater plants growing. One is smooth leafed and the other is all crinkly like leafed. What gives, is maybe one a male and the other female or something?
As always thank ya much, ya all rock!
gary
Location: Washington, Puget Sound Corridor
Posted: Jun-16-2005 at 6:52am
Keep hilling up. Normally your limit is how high you can pile the dirt based upon your row physics. But people do grow them in garbage cans by filling up the can.
I do not think there is sex involved in the leaves. Most likely are some deasease or different varieties unless your sack was a 50 pounder of a single variety from a grower. Seed potatoes are always covered by dirt and do not look as different in the spring as they do at harvest. I always seem to get one or two into a row of some other variety.
Gary
Daniel
Location: British Columbia, Southwestern
Posted: Jun-16-2005 at 5:32pm
Why would you hill up potatoes?
I have some very persistent volunteer potatoes left over from the previous residents and have finally allowed them to stay. When and why do you hill up taters?
Daniel
Bill
Location: Washington, Western Cascade Foothills
Posted: Jun-16-2005 at 8:03pm
I'm sure someone more knowledgable than me will answer better than me but here goes: Hilling is putting soil up around potato plants stalks. I guess you do this every once in awhile when the potatoe plants have grown a bunch.
When you put this extra soil there it allows the taters themselves to grow and expand upwards without getting exposed to the sun which will screw up their coloring (if the taters were to stick up out of the dirt), and lets your potatoes themselves grow bigger.
The little hill is suppose to not let them get water puddling around them and making the soil get compacted too.
Gary: on my tater plants they were all from the same bag from home depot, and all doing good so dont think diseased, so I think your thought on a couple types from the same bag must be it.
gary
Location: Washington, Puget Sound Corridor
Posted: Jun-17-2005 at 6:47am
Bill,
I'm almost sure now. Unless you were the first one to the bag, we don't know who changed their mind and put some in the wrong bag. Maybe the flower colors will tell us?
You are right on the hilling but for two additional points. First, most potatoes will put more 'stolans' out and form potatoes higher up the stem. Second, a few hillings is a way to control the weeds in the bed before the plants grow enough to shield the soil and limit weed germination.
By the way, the green color of a sun exposed potato is poisonous. I don't know how much and I have peeled off some green myself. It is much better to just hill them up to keep them covered with loose soil (a special benefit in clay soils).
Potatoes in a hill row will also dry out quicker for storing since water drains to the surrounding soil level. This is a good idea especially when we get 4" of rain in August and September like we did last year.
In fact, I use the row as the early root cellar by cutting the tops when they start to die and covering the row with plastic to keep off the rain.
Gary
Gardening for the Homebrewer: Grow and Process Plants for Making Beer, Wine, Gruit, Cider, Perry, and More
By co-authors Debbie Teashon (Rainy Side Gardeners) and Wendy Tweton