Three foot wide beds six foot bucket

[rims421]

I have a New Holland TC 35 tractor with a six foot wide front end loader.
I am a certified organic grower that needs to spread approx. 20- 30 yards of compost per season.
The space between the rear wheels is approx. three feet (that will be the width of my beds) The wheels tracks will be my walkways.
I am looking for a way to use the front end loader to apply compost to my three foot wide beds using my six foot wide loader. I don't have a quick release bucket mount.
The only idea I have come up with so far is to mount a smaller three foot wide bucket inside of my existing bucket.
Anyone have any ideas?

 

[RoMad]

you could make, or have someone make, a steel box that fits in your bucket that is the width of the inside of the bucket in the back and then necks down to 3' wide in the front. Kind of a funnel shape for the part that is not in your bucket. If you had it made out of 1/4" plate on the side and mabye 3/8" on the bottom it should be heavy duty enough to scoop up the compost. It would not need a top, just the two sides and the bottom.
Once you have it in your bucket you could clamp it or drill a couple holes in your bucket up near the top and pin it in.
You could even make a practice one out of plywood and shovel the compost in it to see how well it dumped and experiment with the size.

 

[Smallplot]

Have you looked into any of the compost spreaders available. They have several designed for top dressing banded applications but I don't know anything about any of them.

On the DIY side, cut some plywood strips 1 1/2 feet wide big long enough to extend just beyond the top and bottom lip of bucket (or metal). In each of these cut 4 narrow slits, just wide enough for a ratchet strap , two in top 1/3 and two in bottom 1/3. Slits need to be about 2 inches from both outside edges but directly above each other. Feed one ratchet strap through each set of perpendicular slits (total of 4) from back side of board. after filling bucket set the pieces in place on the outside corners of bucket and attach ratchet straps around bucket (straps will come over the ends of the board and then around bucket). After bucket is empty, take the two pieces off and you can refill the bucket.

The only problem I can see with doing it this way is while you are spreading the compost it will dump heavier on both sides as product pours out from the sides behind the makeshift partitions. But it is a quick and you will get plenty of exercise getting on and off your tractor.

If you or someone you know is good with a welder they could weld you some all metal partitions with sides that you may be able to attach with bolts allowing ease of removal.

 

[rims421]

That's an interesting idea. I may have to make up a plywood version as you suggest and give it a test run.

 

[reggiejr]

Just to throw it out there how about doing it when the ground is frozen?

If you keep your stockpile covered it should be workable in cold weather if not you could use a toothbar on your bucket to punch a hole in the stockpile.

then you could run perpendicular to the beds at the full payload of the bucket.then just till it all in come spring.

 

[DRL]

How about welding up a funnel type thing and hinge it at the top of the bucket and control it like a grapple. That way you could pick it up out of the way to scoop up a bucket full and then lower the funnel over the bucket to dump into the beds.

DRL

 

[aczlan]

What if you got a manure spreader and ran that behind the tractor with the beaters spinning slowly?

That might be a more efficient way to spread compost and you could put a "shield" on the sides of the beaters to keep the compost in line.

Aaron Z

 

[Mathias NY]

I'll second the manure spreader idea. 20-30 yards of compost is a lot of compost. Even heaped across all 72" of your bucket, you are probably still only about 1/2 cuft per bucket. This would mean 27 trips per yard and about 675 trips for the season.

A spreader would allow for better distribution of the material and significantly reduce the soil compaction caused by driving over the rows several hundred times a season.

If you had a small trailer that would fit down the row, someone could stand on it and shovel off the compost as you drove along. This might be a less expensive approach than buying a spreader.

Good luck.

 

[tungularafishcamp]

All my stuff is raised beds and while I cant drive over them I can reach to the middle beds of the hoop house side plastic off. I use some scrap metal roofing to stretch over the walkways just dump the kelp/compost on the beds/walkways then pour the excess off the steel by dumping it either by hand with kelp or with the forks with compost.

 

[hunterridgefarm]

I agree that pulling something behind the tractor may be most effective. However you could fabricate something like the attached sketch out of lightweight aluminum. ( Please excuse the crude drawing) and strap it to your bucket.

The dimensions I put in was just for thought. Depending on the lenght of your beds you could fill the scoop and back the tractor down the rows while dumping the load.

Just a thought.

David