Hilling Potatoes: Uncovering the Truth

We use a 3" auger to drill a 8 to 9 inch hole to plant or taters. We don't hill but once the plants are 6" high We lay a layer of straw to keep exposed tater covered.

I'd like to see the data without the green potatoes added on both sides. I think it would be more statistically significant when you only add edible potatoes on both sides of the equation. With that being said, you've just proven to me that hilling is actually quite essential for ease of harvesting, yields and keeping potatoes from becoming toxic. Thanks!

Trying to figure out when to harvest mine. Forgot when I planted mine. Leaves are still alive. Container grown.

After 150 years of family data of growing taters, that said to hill taters . That's what I DO . GOOD LUCK

Interesting experiment! .. You're really talking about the extra effort in the hilling work. I placed my taters on top of fertile soil .. added about 5 gal bucket of compost .. and a liberal amount of potash .. then topped it off with a very liberal helping of shredded leaves. I had no sun exposure. Off of 4 - 3 ft diameter raised beds .. I harvested 2 - 5 gal. buckets of taters. These were white taters .. my red taters didn't do very well at all .. not sure why.

Awesome test Travis. Enjoyed the journey.

I'll bet the house that the very ones claiming that hilling isn't needed, probably haven't every gardened, or grown much of anything, much less potatoes. Is hilling absolutely a must....no, but it's better for several different reasons. First off, it gives the plants more room to grow it's potatoes in the first place. It also, like he said, protects the potatoes from getting direct sunlight and turning green. It also insulates the potatoes and roots to keep everything cooler, and keeps the soil from drying out,and helps prevent rotting.

I would think the low-producing hills (3 and 6) in the non-hilled data should be considered outliers as well and if you remove them the non-hilled average is 1.73 lb so a difference of only .19 lb (3 oz) per hill. My limited experience with hilling is that 90% of the water you put on 'em ends up running off into the walkways between the hills. I've grown spuds two years now, in 2022 I didn't hill them and I averaged 3.3 lb per hill, in 2023 I thought "boy I'm really gonna do this right" so I hilled them and I ended up with only 1.1 lb per hill. I'm pretty sure that was due to the watering difficulties as I'm hauling water until I can get a well going. I also did 66 hills vs 10 hills the year prior and I just couldn't keep enough water on 'em. This year I planted my spuds 8" deep in the trenches between last year's hills! It took forever for them to come up but that worked out to my advantage because my last frost was over a month later than usual this year (June 17th!). We'll see how it all plays out in Sept but I'm finding them a lot easier to keep wet so far.

I'm a mathematician who works for the state of Georgia. I ran a two sample t-test on the data two times, once with all the data, and a second time removing the outliers from both sets. Travis did not remove the outliers from the unhilled set of data, from what I have seen in the video. Both sets of data yielded the same result. At a significance level of alpha = 0.05 there is no statistically significant difference in the means. That is to say there is no statistically significant difference in the yield between hilling potatoes and not hilling potatoes. Removing the outliers gave me a p value = 0.43, which is very strong evidence for the null hypothesis. Essentially there is a 43% chance of obtaining the data set that Travis obtained, or one more extreme, given the null hypothesis is true (no difference in means, i.e., same yield). Once you remove the outliers the means of both sets of data are extremely close. Given the small sample size in this experiment, If I had to sign off on a conclusion, I would request the experiment be repeated with a sample size of at least 100. I would not draw any conclusions based off of such a small sample size unless I was studying something anomalous for which large data sets are difficult to obtain.

I hill my potatoes 2 or 3 times each season. If I don't some of the potatoes break through the surface and get exposed to the sun (getting scalded or turning green). I get a better & larger yeild too.

We understand here in Alabama.

Thank you for taking the time & effort to do this experimental project!

Grow my Yukon Gold in 10 gallon containers. Add soil twice during the growing season. In ground is not an option due to voles. Numbers are good but I need a formula for fertilizer, like how much to add per container.

Great experiment! I don’t hill only because planting my potatoes deep and not hilling yields more testers than we eat. I donate a lot to the local food bank

Thanks - awesome as always. Love the geeky math!

Half a pound difference per plant is definitely significant.. I plant 6 - 50' rows every year.. So that 1/2lb adds up to roughly 175 lbs of potatoes for me.. I'm glad to see the extra work really does pay off.. Great test man..

Good video. Good experiment. I am one of the guys that don't hill. I plant mine 8" deep using a post hole digger. I normally get 10-12 pounds per pound of seed potatoes. Last year I hilled half and got the same numbers. I believe hilling does have its benefits but for now I'll stick with my method.

Great video!! Glad to see the results and they were much closer than I expected. I never got mine hilled this year with the wet weather in the spring and was busy with other things and was worried I might not have as big of a yield as last year(9x's) but my plants look great and i feel a little better after seeing your data.

I think it would depend on soil types as well. In Kentucky, we have much less sand in our soil. I would wager that hilled potatoes for us would WAY outperform the non-hilled plants. I don’t think our potatoes would do very well in non-hilled, compacted soil. Great video and experiment. I really enjoyed it.

We kind of don't hill. Dig the hole bed about10-12"s deep, mix in some fresh compost and fertilizer, then rake it out flat. Whole bed nice and fluffy. Each bed is 3x5'. I then hoe out 2 trenches 5' long, about 6"s deep, and 4 holes in the bottom of the trenches another 2-3"s deeper. Set the potatoes in the holes and cover with 2-3"s. Let them grow about 3"s, cover them again, grow again, finish covering to level surface. Kind of a reverse hilling. When all the plants are up about 4"s I bury the whole bed with 4-6"s of chopped straw. Next comes the caging. 3 t-posts down each side to support a 3x5' piece of field fencing, 2x4" grid down over the t-posts in the corners supported 18"s above ground level for the plants to grow up through. So now all that's left to do is trim all the bottom leaves off, for air flow between the straw and the plants. So, now the plants are completely shading the ground out, straw acts a layer of hilling, and retains moisture in the soil, no contact of leaves with the soil. Air flow and room to water the soil not down through the plants. This was last year. 1lb of seed = 45+lb harvest from 1 3x5 bed and 2, 10gal bucket. Sarpo Mira's. This year we have 3 beds on the go. Next year we're going to give Purple Vikings also. To get an idea what the support fencing looks like do a you tube search for simplify gardening potato supports. Sorry to be so wordy.