Jim Inman's (jinman) Garden - 2007

[DUMBDOG]

Check out the vidio of my potato digger while it is still on the local television web site.

KFYR-TV North Dakota's NBC News Leader

 

[Bird]

Pretty interesting machine, Dave. I've never actually seen one in person and would like to know more about it; just how it works and what it does.

 

[txdon]

Hey Mr. Hollywood, good news story on your organic garden and good video of the tractor and potato digger in action! A TBN gem.

 

[jinman]

David, great job! Bird's a TBN Super Star, so maybe you could be our TBN Movie Star.

That's a very nice video. The TV crew did a great job of showing your digger in action. I even liked the idea that the reporter dressed appropriately to go into the field.

Now that reminds me...I still have a couple of rows of potatoes to dig.

 

[DUMBDOG]

Pretty interesting machine, Dave. I've never actually seen one in person and would like to know more about it; just how it works and what it does.

I cannot speak for all of the diggers out there, but the one that I have is a three point attachment rather than pull type, the way a lot of them are. It has a PTO driven pump which turns the chain. The front is about a foot of light steel to dig into the ground and the rest is the chain. The chain takes everything out, the dirt, the drip line and the potatoes, and drops them off of the back. The chain pitch on mine is only one inch as I like it to pick up the small potatoes which are good sellers through Labor Day. As you can tell, the soil in my garden is quite heavy and with the moisture in it, comes up in chunks. With the right pitch for the soil and a lighter soil, the dirt would all fall through the chain and the only thing coming out of the back would be the drip line, if installed in the row, and the potatoes After the digger is done, a person has to go through the row and find the potatoes, that is the tough part and usually falls upon my wife. This is still a better method than digging all of those potatoes by hand. This year we cut back and only planted about four acres.

There are more sophisticated models out there where they take the potatoes up to a trailer or a sorting platform to be sorted. This type of operation involves a lot more initial cost and more people to run. This particular one was about three thousand delivered.

 

[jinman]

This is "small potatoes" compared to your operation, David, but here is our one-day tomato harvest this morning. Also our cucumbers and shelled peas. We are going to can tomatoes tomorrow morning and freeze the peas. We'll find somebody to give the cucumbers to since we have a big bag in the refrigerator.

BTW: Our refrigerator is full of tomatoes and containers of sliced cantaloupe. Guess what I'm eating most of the time.

 

[Bird]

That sure is a mess of tomatoes, Jim. By the way, the corn at our Walmart has gone from $.33 an ear to $.25 now. But cantaloupes went from $1.50 to $1.88.

 

[randy41]

i sold 120 lbs of maters at the farmers market today. $3 a pound. organically grown. its still early for them here. also some broccoli, eggplant, cauliflower and squash. wish i had your pile Jim in addition to what i had. people around here are so desperate for vine ripened.

 

[Ray2310]

Jim,

Thats a wonderful bunch of tomatoes you have there. I will be picking my first tomato tommarow morning to eat with breakfast. Picked a couple of cherry tomatoes but I don't count those. My wife can't wait to can tomatoes and make salsa. She is burnt out on beans and zuchinni.

Ray

 

[DUMBDOG]

Jim

Those tomatoes would sell out her in an hour. Being in ND, we do not have the outdoor tomatoes for a while yet. Mine will especially late as we had to much rain in May and I could not get the mulch down and the plants out when I wanted to, there are starting to blossom now.

The only tomatoes in the market are greenhouse grown, the one being grown in the ground in the greenhouse, he has good tomatoes. The other are grown by hydro phonics, had one of those today, on the sour side and not that good, the ones I get at Walmart are better.

The good news is that I will have corn in less than two weeks.