I think you are fine. I have seen them grow that tall - in the North of Russia, where the light conditions are different but potatoes actually grow better there. Here and now, in the very bright and full sun of my community garden plot, the same variety is much shorter. So no, I guess it is not crazy tall. Hilling them up is good but you needn't perfection or 15 inches of soil around them. As long as the growing tubers are well covered with soil, you are good. Any of mine that fail to get good coverage and green up (rendering them not edible), I use for planting next year. In seed potatoes (=the ones used for planting), there is nothing wrong with green color.

My Kennebecs are about 2 feet tall and are starting to bloom too. I hilled a couple of times about 8 inches worth of raised dirt. The object of hilling is mainly to have a raised ridge for the potatoes to form in. If the dirt isn't deep enough, too many potatoes will be exposed and turn green on top.

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.

That's why when I get them up and ripping I often mulch very heavily with straw or hay. The tubers will often grow above the soil in the darkness of the mulch.

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.

Do you have them growing in full sun? I remember years ago, my mother attempted to grow potatoes and the plants got really tall. She had them in partial shade and I guess the plants were searching for the light! She ended up with a harvest that could fit into a shoe box.

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.

Bellamama--Maybe if you understood just why you hill potatoes you will understand just how to hill them. The practice is done for just 2 reasons.

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

Thank you all so much.

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!

The height is normal. Mine are easily 3 feet measured from the average grade (not the top of the hill). Pretty soon they will start flopping over and take up a lot more space width-wise.

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.

I read somewhere about someone growing potatoes in a stack of automobile tires. They just continued adding tires and dirt as the plant grows. That the plant will continue to form tubers along the stem. They had a four/five tire stack by the end of the season expecting tubers the whole length.

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.

The idea that potatoes will produce tubers all the way up the stem has taken hold in the popular mind and led to a lot of impractical schemes that usually fail.

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.

Of lately, but not always, I have been putting my potatoes in a shallow trench, maybe four inches, covering with dirt but not to the top of the trench and covering that with a foot to sixteen inches of leaves, or straw if I run out of leaves.

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 planted potatoes however i think i planted them too close...around 6 in apart...will they be ok..the plants are beautiful.

Angel, your potatoes will be fine, just maybe smaller because they're planted closer together. People actually plant potatoes closer together if they're planning to harvest them as new potatoes (beginning shortly after flower) You could harvest every other plant during the summer for new potatoes (harvest as you need them), and leave the rest to mature later for your fall storage potatoes, and then they'll have the room to grow big.

Maybe I'm thick, but I'm still confused. I hilled once, but should hill again soon. I never know how high to go.

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!

... in hopes of getting answer to how much foliage should show after mulching

egg - the question isn't how much plant should be above the mulch, it's how much plant is below it.

Hi, this is so interesting thanks! I'm new to SC and the planting is so very different from NY.. I have put in raised beds bc the soil here is almost claylike and I was more concerned trying my hand with 2 growing seasons - including following the potato stacking method in bins, started ground level and am stacking the bins as I add dirt and the vines grow taller, I have added red, yellow, russet, and one sweet potato plant - they call it a purple sweet potato (red leaf) is anyone familiar with these at all? Should I harvest as the plant itself flowers? I was under the impression the vines for all of them would start to brown and wither when they're done growing.. I haven't ever grown them before, just learning off the net.. any advice would be appreciated - thanks!

ltilton, of course you're right, b/c different plants are different heights at maturity. Thanks.