Homestead Series Building A Potato Hiller

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Build your own potato hiller to save hours of time in your garden!

If you’ve been growing potatoes long you know just how important it is to hill potato plants.

Hilling your potatoes helps to keep the potato tubers from being exposed to sunlight as they grow. It also increases your yields because the plants have more soil around them to grow in.

But hilling potatoes can take a lot of time! If you are growing just a few rows in your backyard garden it’s easy to hill them by hand.

Our garden has become larger and larger over the years to provide our family with the best organic produce we can grow.

Once we started growing a small market garden as well we found that it took a very long time to hill our potatoes by hand, and yet we didn’t have enough plants to justify using a commercial potato hiller. The past two years we have harvested between 2500 and 3000 pounds of potatoes from our garden.

Because of the layout of our property, we wouldn’t have been able to use a standard tractor attachment anyway. If we wanted to use a commercial potato hiller then we would have needed an attachment like these for a tiller or walk behind tractor.

While they work really well we are trying to get away from machinery and use hand tools whenever possible.

This is when my hubby came up with a great idea, to build his own potato hiller and it has saved us so much time! He has updated the design over the years and we’ve had so many requests to share the plans so that other gardeners and homesteaders could build their own.

So I’m excited to share with you these step by step plans to build your own potato hiller! We used this homemade tool for years in our garden. Now we grow using a Back to Eden garden, deep mulch system and don’t hill our potatoes with soil.

This homemade hiller will also work in a wood chip mulch garden as long as the wood chips are not packed down too tightly. But if you have a deep layer of mulch you might not need to hill potatoes grown that way.

How To Build Your Own Potato Hiller

Don’t miss the printable version at the end of the tutorial.

Supplies For Potato Hiller

• 3 – 2×4’s @ 8 ft.
• 1 – 16”x16” plywood 3/8th or 1/2” thick
• 1 – 1 x 1/2” @ 16” long
• 3” screws
• 1 1/2” screws
• 2 – 3” strap hinges

Cut List

• 1 – 26” with a 45-degree angle on one end (2×4) for base
• 1 – 24” with a 45-degree angle on one end (2×4) for base
• 1 – 7” with a 22.5-degree angle on one end (2×4) for the center brace
• 1 – 14” with a 22.5-degree angle on one end (2×4) for the center brace
• 1 – 5’ (2×4) for the handle
• 1 – 16” (1 x 1/2”) for the handle
• 2 – 8”x8” square with a 3-inch diagonal cut off 1 corner (plywood) for hiller extension

Step 1. Attach The Base

Attach the 24” and 26” base pieces together using two 3” screws.

Step 2. Add The Braces

Place the two center cross braces in-between the 2×4 base where they are even on the ends, placing them approximately halfway up. Attach using two 1 1/2” screws on each side.

Step 3. Attach The Sides

Line up a plywood extension piece so that the corner of the 3” cut off is even with the back edge of the 2×4 base. Screw them together using three 1 1/2” screws. Repeat for the second hiller extension.

Step 4. Make The Handle

Take the 5’ long 2×4 for the handle and line up the 16” long 1 1/2 piece onto it so that it’s centered, attach with two 1 1/2 “ screws.

Step 5. Add Hinges

Turn the handle upside down and attach the strap hinges with two 1 1/2” screws.

Step 6. Attach The Handle

Place the handle over the base positioning the hinges. Attach them with 2 screws on each strap hinge. Don’t place screws into the holes near the edges of the wood because it could cause it to split.

How To Use Your DIY Potato Hiller

This homemade potato hiller is really easy to use. If you would like to see it in action watch the video below. It shows the original version that he made and these plans have been updated with improvements to the homemade potato hiller.

It works best in soft, light soil. So before starting to hill your potatoes till the soil between the rows.

After the soil has been tilled place the potato hiller at the end of the pathway and place a weight on top of the cross braces. You can use a half or full cement blog, sandbag, or a jug of water.

Then start pulling the hiller down the row. It will push the soil up and alongside of the potato plants.

When you reach the end of the row lift the front up slightly as you turn to help take the pressure off the hinge.

Want a printable version? I share printables as a bonus to my subscribers. Sign up below to get your copy.

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