I'm also wondering whether these plants are leggy or whether they're supposed to be this tall. The tallest ones (about to flower) have 20 inches of stem/leaves showing above the dirt. Is that crazy tall for potato plants? I just read something that said that there should only be 4-5 inches of plant showing above the hill, but if I were to use more dirt/compost to hill them, I'd have to add another 15 inches of soil. I can't even figure how I'd get it to stay that high without some kind of container.

If some experienced potato growers could set me straight on all this, I'd really appreciate it.

Thank you!

Don't bury things just because someone said so somewhere. By the time the plants start blooming, you don't want to disturb the roots.

Another trick, instead of hilling with dirt is to trench out the rows you'll be growing potatoes in. Then lay them in the trench and lightly cover them as they grow. As they grow taller rake or hoe in the soil mounded up on either side from the trenching. By the time the soil is even across the rows, the potatoes have already been hilled up a few inches.

The thing with spuds is like tomatoes they root along the stems if underground. More roots, more drought resistant and more potential roots, more opportunities for potato tubers to form.

My potatoes get around 2 and 2 1/2 feet tall, and they get hilled once during the growing season. They are heavy feeders, so would appreciate an application of fertilizer or two.

1) to support the plants so they don't fall over
2) to keep the potatoes from being exposed to sunlight and turning green so they are no good.

As long as you accomplish these 2 things you will have hilled enough. My 80 year old husband has been growing potatoes all his life. First on his parents farm and for the 40 years we have lived in this house. He hills them twice during the growing season, usually well before they flower.

Your plants are certainly not too tall. Ours are usually about 2 1/2 foot tall

Donna, this is our first year with a real garden. Late last summer our neighbor removed a big old tree that shaded the right side of our yard, and we got so excited we went crazy with the garden this spring without really knowing just how much sun we'd end up having. I know now that we're juuust a smidge short on both quality and quantity (getting about 5 hours, from 11:30ish to 4:30ish, although things still look like they're growing well. They sure do look impressive! But I am sweating and fussing over those beds every stinking day, hoping that they're getting enough strong sun :-)

Katya and wayne5, thank you for the reassurance!

Calliope, I did exactly what you said with the trenching, but I think I didn't go deep enough at the start. Any more soil that I add will have to come from somewhere else. Next year I will DEFINITELY go deeper. I've already made that note in my garden journal!

Dowlinggram, thank you. I think what's throwing me off is this--where exactly are the tubers going to grow? I've never even seen potato plants in real life, and I expected the tubers to grow under the soil, where most root veggies grow. Right? But it seems like they must grow up the sides of the stem or something? So if I never hilled at all, would I eventually see potato tubers hanging off the sides of my plants? I definitely don't see/feel anything under the soil yet (I was feeling around gently as I was hilling the other day). Do the tubers start growing once the blossoms appear?

I really appreciate the hand-holding. I know I'm on a bit of a short timeline now. Pretty much everything else in the garden makes sense to me, but the potatoes are very mysterious, LOL!

Thank you again!

No, you won't ever see tubers 'hanging' from the plant, because once stem is exposed to light for long it will not produce the tuberous roots. What can happen is as a tuber gets bigger it starts to protrude above the soil and the sun will turn it green and you can't eat that part. If you see that cover them up with dirt or mulch.

Having never grown potatoes at all..........Does that make sense? I like the idea of getting the most out of the space vertically. Though I think I would have to make stackable wooden boxes, piles of tires in the yard doesnt sound attractive.

Potato tubers grow from stolons - underground stem extensions that grow from nodes on the stem underground. The potato forms as a swelling on the stolon, and each stolon can produce several potatoes and reach a foot or more from the seed potato. They also have a tendency to reach deeper into the earth.

Your concern for sunlight is well-founded. The potato plant needs sunlight to grow, and this is reduced drastically if most of the leaves are buried. I suspect this may be one reason for the failure of so many vertical potato-growing schemes.

The plants DO need to be hilled or covered to the point where the tubers aren't exposed to light.

If you trench down up to eight inches, the deepest I have planted but then I did not trench then, I simply dug a hole, one does not really need to hill, just check for potatoes maybe reaching the surface.
You can then simply put soil over the potato or use some sort of mulch.

When I dig even with the shallow method, I bury the vines in the "hole" the old one came out of (I actually make a hole) as the potato vines leave the soil in fantastic conditon the next spring, although it is not a good idea to plant potatoes in the same area year after year after year after year unless you amend the soil.

This year as I had a box that had been left out in the rain and was just nasty looking, I took Miracid and spread it over the area of one potatoe plot and roto-tilled it in before planting.
I did notice the plants that came up in that plot were definitely a deeper green, but that, outside of making the soil more acidic which is good, does not do much for potato size or quality.

I'm also confused about the purpose of hilling. I've read it's to keep the sun off the potatoes, and to provide more room for tubers to form, since they grow up, rather than down, from the seed potato. I'd never heard the purpose is to support the plants.

So my questions are:
1. How much foliage SHOULD ultimately be showing above the hill of soil/mulch?
2. Does hilling up around the plants actually increase the growing area for the potatoes?

I've been vegetable gardening for 30 years and doing well, because, I think, my practices are generally good. But there's so much I don't actually know about, and the more I read on GW, the more I realize I don't know!

I made a 'planter box' out of sod I cut up from my new-home-lawn and planted my 'tatoes inside, down about 6 inches. I covered the wee plants with 8" of compost when they emerged and have been adding straw on top of that. The plants are now about 24" of plant above 18" of soil/compost and straw. My question is, is the straw enough to stimulate tubers to develop, or do I need to sprinkle in some more soil?

Thanks, potato gurus!