2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
All summer residents are well aware of the need to spud potatoes, however, as practice shows, not everyone knows how to do it correctly. Hilling is a very traditional and fairly simple method of processing potatoes, but it also has its own nuances. So how to hilling potatoes correctly, and when is the best time to start hilling potatoes?
When to start hilling?
Modern literature is replete with the most diverse answers to this seemingly not at all difficult question. All sources, without exception, unanimously agree that in this case it is necessary to focus on the height of the shoots, but in matters of the height of these same shoots, the data differ - most often the numbers fall in the range from fourteen to twenty centimeters.
As for experienced summer residents, many of them prefer to start hilling potatoes as early as possible, since early hilling can replace both loosening of the soil and weeding. And in regions with an unstable climate, it also provides seedlings with additional protection from destructive return frosts - the seedlings covered with a soil layer can easily tolerate even a short drop in temperature to zero degrees!
When hot weather is established, hilling is usually carried out in the very morning or in the evening, when the sun will be much less active than during the day. Ideally, it is best to huddle potatoes after rain - the moist soil will not crumble from the ridges. Well, if rain is not expected, then it is recommended to water completely dry soil beforehand!
What else is hilling for?
Surely many have noticed that after hilling, the growth of potatoes noticeably accelerates, and under favorable weather conditions, potato bushes begin to grow stronger and grow literally by leaps and bounds. So do not be lazy to walk through the beds with a hoe, rolling the loosened earth to the ridges!
How often to spud?
Traditionally, potatoes are hilled twice, with a second hilling being carried out about two to three weeks after the first is completed (roughly before the potatoes begin to bloom). However, if the first hilling is done too early, two times may not be enough. If the potato bushes began to slowly "fall apart", the nests began to form not along the ridges, gradually expanding in breadth, but tubers, turning green in the light, began to peep out of the soil - then it’s time to carry out the next hilling! So sometimes the number of hilling can easily increase up to three or four times per season!
How to huddle correctly?
Most often, traditional hilling is carried out using a hoe, which can be either trapezoidal or triangular, with sharp or rounded edges. Having dug up the space between the grooves (you can use a flat cutter for this purpose), they immediately begin to huddle the beds in one direction - moving along the beds, they carefully scoop up the soil from the row spacing to one side of the potato bushes. And after that, they move on to hilling the beds on the other side - there they are already moving in the opposite direction, raking up the earth to the other side of the bushes. Next, a hoe rake the soil to the potato bushes from all sides, doing this until a lot of "mounds" with stalks sticking out of them are formed on the beds. Each mound should be high and wide enough. And at the end of each potato row, a small "dam" should be poured, designed to retain water after rains.
In addition to traditional hilling, some summer residents quite successfully use the fan method, but the hoe is no longer suitable for it - it is best to use a shovel. As a rule, fan hilling is carried out when potato stalks grow up to fifteen to twenty centimeters up. Having parted the potato stalks with the help of their hands, they immediately spread them over the soil surface in a fan in different directions, after which they take a shovel and fall asleep in the center of each bush the soil taken from the row spacing. This land should be distributed in such a way that only the tops of the stems with leaves are visible from above. In addition, weeds weeded out from the row spacing are also thrown over from above - they will help to retain moisture in the soil and provide additional fertilizing to the potatoes. At the same time, there is absolutely no need to fear for the safety of potato stalks - literally the next day they will quite happily continue to grow upward, and after one and a half to two weeks each bush will noticeably grow not only upwards, but also to the sides, in addition, they will appear on all of them. new shoots! This method of hilling allows you to increase the yield due to the formation of new potato tubers!
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