The clever gardener piles up in the spring and harvests most of the tubers in the summer. The experienced gardener does it as if in his sleep. For everyone else, detailed instructions follow. This is how potatoes are piled up.
In a nutshell
- use a broad-leaved hoe with a long handle or a special potato hoe for earthing up
- Loosen the soil around the potato plant, remove weeds and pull to the base of the plant
- only the tips of the shoots should stick out
- First piling up when plants are about 15 cm high
- repeat every 2-3 weeks
Table of contents
- Appropriate tool
- Piling up potatoes: instructions
- frequently asked Questions
Appropriate tool
For ridging, you can use virtually any gardening tool you already have that allows you to pull the top layer of soil around a plant toward the base of the stem. For example, a small hoe with a short handle is sufficient for a few potato plants. The work is more pleasant when the hoe is broad-leaved so that it digs up a lot of soil can move once and has a comfortable grip so that you can work upright while protecting your back can.
Tip: If you plan, every year grow lots of potato plants, it is also worthwhile for you to purchase a special potato hiller. The plow-like device becomes easy between the rows of potatoes pulled. The collected soil is evenly piled up on the left and right of the potato plants.
Piling up potatoes: instructions
- Wait until the potato plants have reached a height of about 15 cm before mounding.
- Choose a dry day for mounding (preferably after several days without rain) because wet soil is difficult to mound. Also, avoid watering the potatoes just before piling them up.
- Start piling with the first plant at the beginning of a row.
- Loosen the soil around the potato plant to a depth of about 10 to 15 cm.
- Meanwhile you should also pluck out all weeds. collect from the loosened layer of soil.
- Then pull the loosened and weed-free soil up against the potato plant from both sides until only its tip is sticking out of the piled-up mound of earth.
- Work your way plant by plant to the end of the row.
- Then pile up the potato plants of the adjacent row, etc. This will prevent you from trampling on the earth that has already been heaped up.
Tip: In order for the mounding of your potato plants to work well, there must be enough space between them. Therefore, when planting the seed bulbs, make sure they are at least 50 cm apart.
frequently asked Questions
Piling up is important as it reliably helps increase crop yield. Because new adventitious roots with other tubers form around the heaped-up stem area. The loosened soil is also conducive to tuber formation. Later, mounding is also important to cover exposed tubers to keep them from turning green (and therefore poisonous).
The piling up depends exclusively on the size or Height of young plants and not according to the calendar. How quickly they grow to around 15 cm in height depends on a number of factors. For example, whether the tubers were driven out, when they were planted and, of course, the current weather. The warmer the days are, the faster potato plants grow. Then you even have to be careful not to miss the ideal time for piling up.
The more often you pile up the potato, the more you will be able to benefit from it during harvest. Depending on how fast the plants grow, the mounding will need to be repeated about every 2-3 weeks until the plants eventually reach their final size.
Alternatively, you can cover the potato bed with a 20 cm layer of mulch made of leaves, grass or straw.
