A week ago I dug a trench in part of the yard to plant potatoes in, it was literally a trench which consisted of a bottom with sides that sloped upwards toward mounds of dirt. I made holes for my already sprouting potatoes that I had kept for a little too long in the kitchen, watered them in and covered them up with soil. As I watered them through the week I came upon the annoying situation of the mounds of dirt slowly crumbling into the potato trench. So when the next weekend rolled by I went immediately to crazy work mode and built a bottomless box to: 1. Keeping the unecessary dirt out, 2. Create an easier time for me to hill whence the time came, and 3. Keeping the yard looking nice and organized.
Let me get back to "hilling" just incase you have no idea what that means. Hilling is basically mounding dirt around the growing stem of the potato plant. Pictured below (where the little orange arrows are) you can see the stem and leaves of the potato plant pushing out the through the soil, once the potato plant reaches about 8-12 inches you simply mound dirt to cover 2/3 of the stem, you keep repeating this process until the potato flowers appears at which point you know the potatoes are almost ready to be pulled out, but not quite, because you have to wait for the leaves and flower to whither and turn yellow before you do so. The whole idea is (well it's not really an idea since it really does occur) is that hilling creates more space for more potatoes to appear, the covered portion of the stem in the process of hilling allows more potatoes to form on the stem covered by the dirt. "Hilling" is also called "challenging".
So in an effort to make it easier for the hilling process and because of the annoying excess mounds of dirt crumbling into my potato space I gathered 5 pieces of wood and a few nails to build a box to enclose the potato trench in. I was pretty pleased with myself once the work was done :) You can make it easier on yourself and simple grab two long boards for the long side and 2 short boards for the short sides and nail them to create a box frame that has neither top or bottom, in my case however I hadn't two long boards, just 5 medium length boards and so went on to make a long rectangular frame that way; by nailing to medium boards at the ends to creat one long board (doing the same for the other long side), then cutting in half the remaining medium board to create two shorter boards for the short sides, I then nailed it into a box frame. It did turn out mighty fine if I do say so myself.
Read the following post on Getting The Most Out Of Your Potatoes By Challenging
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