Technically you don't HAVE TO HILL any variety of potatoes. Here's how it works: you plant the seed potato (which is an extra small potato saved/stored from last year's harvest -- or a piece of a larger potato that you stored/saved from last year) -- the DEPTH THAT you PLANT that SEED POTATO determines your LOWEST POINT -- GENERALLY, and I do mean GENERALLY (like 95% of the potatoes) the potato plant will not create tubers LOWER than the depth you planted the seed potato at (so your seed potato is the BOTTOM of the plants tubers/potatoes). Which is why some people think the very bottom potato always rots, when in reality it is the seed potato and is expected to grow and will appear rotten. Which means if you don't hill up as your potato plant grows and you planted the seed potato shallow, there is not that much ROOM for the potato plant to put it's tubers, and larger tubers will usually "pop" out of the soil and turn green due to sun exposure. If you don't want to hill up, plant your seed potato deeper than recommended -- yes it will be fine -- the reason you plant shallow and mound up is because the potato plant will be able to get leaves into the sun sooner if it's seed potato was planted shallow, which means it will grow quicker because it is collecting light sooner -- then you mound up to offset that you planted the seed potato shallow, but you always leave lots of leaves exposed to the sun so the plant can collect sun and grow. It's a lot of extra work work to mound up soil-- and maybe speeds up the process "brings in the harvest" by 10 days or so.... My experience is planting seed potatoes a foot deep ((30cm) is fine -- yes the plant takes a little longer for it's leaves to surface -- but it's fine and you should not experience any problems - provided the soil is nice and loose. (hopefully that makes senses). I think in the future I will plant two potatoes side by side -- one deep, one using the mound method and record the progress and final outcomes... I have never done a tandem planting -- BUT I HAVE had potatoes spring up from deep down Once as I dug out one of these "self planted potatoes" I realized it was down about 30" (70cm) -- it was in a potato planting tower (old full size garbage can full of 3" holes all over) which I dumped and collect the potatoes from the year before, then just put the soil back, week by week, as I composted kitchen scraps directly into the soil... so no surprise that a potato was so deep -- it grew -- it put out potatoes and it's crop was average good... it spent a lot of energy growing up -- and perhaps I harvested too early based on the other potatoes-- but it made it and did OK, good size potatoes, good quantity. I would not recommend placing your seed potatoes that deep, but a foot (30cm) should be fine.

- Celeste Archer