Tractor use in garden?

[adegiulio]

You folks were so helpful with my first novice question, I have another for you. Me and a friend tend a rather large vegetable garden every year. We use his tractor for plowing and tilling, but when it comes time for cultivating, we just use a hoe to clear weeds, then till them into the soil using a walk-behind tiller. Is there a method and attachement that allows us to till using the tractor, without destroying our plants? Our rows are about 2 to 2 1/2 feet apart.

Thanks for any help. Sorry if I sound stupid, but I am just beginning with all of this stuff.

 

[stmiller2]

How about a one-row cultivator? See the Tractor Supply web page .

 

[Bird]

Steve, that's just exactly what I used, except I took those little chisel blades off and put 6" field sweeps on mine. Works pretty well as long as the plants aren't too tall to straddle with the tractor.

 

[theboman]

They are under $200 around here. I want one, but in the next 30 days my garden will be entierly too tall to use a cultivator.
Last year I used a hoe and a weed eater! ha.

 

[Trev]

Not sure I fully understand the question.. but my routine is.. first go around with the front blade and dirt scoop.. get any rocks out that I can find. Then till the whole thing. Then we plant rows that are wide enough for me to drive between them with the tiller.. gets rid of most of the weeds. After we hand-pick the plants, I'll till it again and use the spreader to plant rye or barley or something that can be tilled under in the Spring as "green manure."

I think you're asking more about how to pick the plants? I have no idea.. we just do it by hand.

Bob

 

[adegiulio]

No, I'm not asking about picking the plants, I want to know about weekly maintenance. Driving a tractor over the garden early in the season is not a problem since the plants are small, but as the season goes on, I can't see using the tractor since the plants would all just get trampled...

 

[Trev]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( No, I'm not asking about picking the plants, I want to know about weekly maintenance. Driving a tractor over the garden early in the season is not a problem since the plants are small, but as the season goes on, I can't see using the tractor since the plants would all just get trampled...
)</font>

Depends on how much land you have to play with. If you plan it out, you can have your rows wide enough to drive your tractor/tiller right between them and get most of the bloody weeds out that way. It isn't the most efficient in terms of land utilization, I guess, but it seems to work pretty well. Most of the plants pretty much grow UP and not OUT. So you still have your lane to till in. This isn't an ideal solution, of course.. you still have the weeds that need hand picking near the plants and where you can't till. But it does solve 90 percent of the problem. Of course you nick a few plants in the process, and your wife yells at you, but generally it seems to work okay.

 

[fractal]

I have seen tractors with "strawberry" tires in some of the fields around here. No, they aren't red, they are just very big metal wheels with narrow tires. Lets the tractor drive in the narrow rows between the berries. I suspect it is ever 2nd or 3rd row. They do have cultivators for handling the between row weeds. I am not sure how to adopt that concept to driving the 'bota over my tomatoes without destroying them.

I am not a big fan of hand hoing. I too have narrow rows. I aim for 2 to 2 1/2 ft workways between rows and hills. Seems the tomatoes and mellons often don't agree and I wind up with less. My standard technique for handling overgrown weeds has been to use the good old rear bagging lawn mower. Lower it as low as it will go and run it between the rows. Weeds and seeds all go into the bag.

I used to roll out landscaping cloth between rows but haven't don it in a while. Plastic would work as well for keeping weeds between the rows under control. I just try to get rid of as many as possible at the beginning of the season, then mow them down as they get going as the season progresses. I suppose your technique of tilling them would work (after mowing) except that our ground here is pretty hard and I use drip irrigation on the crop so the dirt between the rows gets rather dry and very hard.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Why not use the walk behind tiller as the cultivator? Plant the rows wide enough for the tiller and just go down between the rows with the depth set an inch or two. I add a hiller furrower that pushes the tilled dirt to the sides. This is only used after the food plants get a little height on them; the dirt smothers the weeds that come up in the row between the plants (great for corn). I wouldn’t want to do this for a huge garden but for most average size ones it works fine and if you already have the walk behind you may as use it.
If space is an issue; I plant two rows about 16-20 inches apart and then the next row a tiller and a half apart. I continue to alternate like this – close, spaced, close …This works best for crops that grow up enough to shade in the close area so weeds can’t grow. A few times with a hoe in the early part of the season knocks down the weeds.

Dog

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Dog: You got it right. Throw the dirt over the weeds (as long as the "crop" is higher than the weeds). Cultivation was a strong suit of the old tricycle tractors. My new NH TC40 is great for lots of stuff, but the old Farmall Super C would cultivate great - straddle about any row spacing and plant height up to about 1 1/2 foot or more. Where you from in "Northern KY" - near Owensboro? There's a great BBQ mutton place there on west Parrish - Moonlite Inn. Been going there since the 50s. JEH