Best Way to Hill Sweet Potatoes with the High Arch Wheel Hoe
High Arch Wheel Hoe
Similar in design to the Double, the High Arch Wheel Hoe allows you to straddle plants as well, but much taller plants like corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. It also contains adjustable wheel spacing meaning the wheels can move in or out depending on your desired spacing in the garden. So basically you have three different settings on the wheel spacing which includes the innermost being 4 inches apart, the middle being 6 inches apart, and the farthest being 8 inches apart. Another difference is the High Arch has two toolbars instead of just one, which provides many more possibilities for planting within the garden. When it comes time to hill sweet potatoes we use the High Arch over any other wheel hoe because of its ability to adjust the spacing on the row of plants that are in the garden.
Hill Sweet Potatoes
On this week's episode, Travis is explaining the best way to hill sweet potatoes using the High Arch Wheel Hoe in the vegetable garden. To hill sweet potatoes you don't necessarily have to, but Travis likes to for a couple of different reasons such as weed control, production, and ease of digging along the rows. For reducing weeds growing along the sweet potato rows, Travis has been using the single tine cultivator to help control the weed germination until the plants have grown a little bit bigger. Once, the plants have become established we can go in with the High Arch to hill the sweet potatoes and smother out the weeds in the middle. Since sweet potato plants grow in vines along the ground which in return produces runners that spread throughout the entire garden plot. The vines or runners will set roots in the ground and start to produce even more sweet potatoes in the vegetable garden. In other words, Travis is going to concentrate on those vines or runners in one spot and cover them up by hilling it will increase our overall production of sweet potatoes. As a warm-weather crop, when it comes time to dig sweet potatoes it can become tough because the summer sun is baking the ground and make the garden soil hard to work in. To avoid digging in the hard ground, Travis likes to go in between the rows using the Double Wheel Hoe with the sweeps attachment to break up the soil and have some available soil to use during the hilling process. Using the High Arch, Travis is going to use the widest setting in order to throw up a wider hill to the sweet potatoes. If you happen to run over a couple of the plants, it will be fine because sweet potato plants are really resilient and the vines will grow back quick. As the sweet potato plants continue to grow, Travis will continue to hill the plants to maintain the garden. Then, towards the last hill, before harvesting, he will probably have to use a garden rack to hill the plants and get a nice mound towards the end of the growing season.