Hilling Potatoes and Transplanting Tomatoes -- Ninety Seventh Post

One of my weirdly distinct memories from grade school is not knowing how to spell "potato" and/or "tomato" because I couldn't remember which one had an "e" on the end. Turns out, neither one does, except in the plural.
My darling plants are at some crucial stages: the beets really need to go into their forever pots but it's too cold at night, my remaining tomato seedling is about three inches tall and starting to mysteriously lose leaves, I just planted my carrot seeds, and my potatoes have finally sprouted. The peas are doing the best, having all sprouted happily and transitioned easily from their indoor life to their forever pot. I'm going to split credit between their natural hardiness and my clever plan to start them in decomposable pots, thus eliminating stress to their roots during transplanting.
My root and leaf vegetables are all a little iffy. The celery seems to be making a comeback from whatever it was that ailed it, but my kale never sprouted. The bok choy seem to be doing well, but they're still all crowded into a tiny terra cotta pot and I don't think they would appreciate transplant at this point even if I had a good place for them. My surviving beets are all pretty vigorous, but they're growing indoors in temporary pots with no real plan for where to settle them and tend to break at the soil line when exposed to wind. The radishes, in with the celery, are leggy and the parsnips only just sprouted. It could be worse!
Anyway, on to the real reason I started to write this post: potatoes and tomatoes.
Both tomatoes and potatoes have the nifty ability to root from their stems, making it highly lucrative (if your currency is potatoes) to bury the stems or "hill" the potatoes as they grow. For tomatoes, you can increase their health and likelihood of outdoor survival if you bury the stems when you transplant them because it wildly improves and enlarges their root systems. A critical step in cultivating both plants is actually carrying out the burying of stems.
In the case of tomatoes, which those of us in cool climates have to start indoors or buy half-grown, there comes a time when they will be planted in a forever site, be it indoor pot, outdoor pot, or the ground.

Image from http://www.cyber-north.com/gardening/tomato.html

At this point, you will dig a hole big enough that your tomato can sit in it up to its lowest set of leaves. If it's a particularly tall plant and you have a lot of space or it's just really compact and has leaves all the way down to the ground, you can pinch off a few sets of leaves close to the ground. Another nifty trick if you have the space is the trench method, wherein you dig a little trench and plant your tomato sideways, gently training the top at a right angle to the ground so that it grows upright. I really like the idea of this method, but I almost certainly won't have space. For those who start tomatoes from seed, you should repot them at least once before they reach their forever home and bury the stem each time. It's really important for those of us with a little bit of a brown thumb or less than ideal growing conditions, because those extra roots will really give your plant a leg up on its circumstances in addition to renewing the dirt. If you're a hydroponic/aquaponic/non-dirt gardener, I have no idea what to tell you. I have a hard enough time with normal growing, and your way is kind of expensive.
For potatoes, stem-burying comes in the form of hilling. Like the name implies, you build up dirt around the stems, nearly to the tops of the leaves.

Image from https://www.quickcrop.co.uk/product/3-pack-potato-patio-planter

A brief google search indicates that 6-8 inches of stem is the best amount of time to let your potato vines grow before hilling. Since they don't put roots down, but rather out, potatoes are actually fantastic container plants. Just plant your seed potatoes on a few inches of soil in the bottom of a deep container with decent drainage, add another few inches of soil, and wait. Water well. When you've got 6-8 inches of vine, bury all but the top few inches of the plants and wait for the next 6-8 inches of vine to grow. Again, water well, because the buried vines are going to put off a lot of little potato babies and those babies need water to develop. After another 6-8 inches of vines have grown, bury all but the top few inches in dirt, straw, or mulch of some kind (I've seen arguments for everything, so do your own research and see which ought to work best in your particular garden) and (wait for it) water well. Wait for the vines to flower and then die back, then dump your container onto a tarp/plastic tablecloth (or someplace where extra dirt and potato bits are acceptable) and pick through it for your buried treasure. If you plant them in the ground, you'll be able to hill dirt around the stems from nearby, but you'll also have to do actual digging come harvest, which can result in damaged potatoes.