Hilling
technique in agriculture and horticulture of piling soil up around the base of a plant
Hilling, earthing up or ridging is the technique in agriculture and horticulture of heaping soil up around the base of a plant. It can be done by hand (usually using a hoe), or with powered machinery, typically a tractor attachment.
Hilling buries the normally above-ground part of the plant, promoting desired growth. This may encourage the development of additional tubers (as with potatoes), force the plant to grow longer stems (leeks), or for some crops (chicory, leeks, asparagus etc.) this blanching technique keeps the stems or shoots pale and tender, or influences their taste.
Hilling helps to smother weeds. It may also be used to stabilize the stems of crops which are easily disturbed by wind.
Examples
A common application of hilling is for potatoes. The tubers grow just below the surface, and can produce chlorophyll and solanine if exposed to light (green potatoes). Solanine is toxic in large doses, and can result in nausea, headache, and in rare cases, death. By hilling one or more times during the growing season – effectively, burying the potatoes in an additional few inches of soil – yield is improved, and the harvest remains edible.
The public source identifies “Hilling” as technique in agriculture and horticulture of piling soil up around the base of a plant. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hilling, technique and agriculture.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hilling” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.