Potato plow

[Rob30]

Anyone make a potato plow? After doing about 600ft of potatos I am seriously thinking of making a plow for behind the fordson. My thoughts are that I can use the plow to also make furrows for planting seedlings. We have clay soil so digging is not easy.
What other implements are people using to make there large gardens easier? We have about a 1 acre plus a few smaller gardens. Most of our work is done by hand.

[ovendoctor]

on the farm years ago we used a v plow for trenching surface drainage
[before drain tileing came around]
it is set up on a 3 pt hitch and depth is adjusted with the tractor

hope this helps

Doc.

[wy_white_wolf]

Growing up we used a single disc behind a 9N to plant potatoes.

Disc up one row, place seed potatoes, discing next row covers the first row.

With four or five of us working on it we could do about an acre in 1 to 2 hours. Grandpa driving the tractor and the rest setting out the seed. With 150' rows it usually took about the same time for the rest of us to seed out the seed as it took for grandpa to get back around the garden to disc the next row.

WWW

[am1too]

Originally Posted by Rob30

Anyone make a potato plow? After doing about 600ft of potatos I am seriously thinking of making a plow for behind the fordson. My thoughts are that I can use the plow to also make furrows for planting seedlings. We have clay soil so digging is not easy.
What other implements are people using to make there large gardens easier? We have about a 1 acre plus a few smaller gardens. Most of our work is done by hand.

The most effective implement I know of is compost, compost, compost and more compost. Did I say compost? It changed the nature of my soil. I have no mud and can walk on it after a hard rain. My radishes and onions are taller than my sunflowers and huge. I've only watered my garden twice this year.

[uncle Will in In.]

If you have a Ford with a three point hitch, you need a mounted two row cultivater to fit the three point hitch. To make furrows to plant in, you could put two big shovels on the cultivater where the empty spaces are that straddle the row when cultivating the rows. Get all the bolts oiled up really well so you can move the shovels around to fit the job you are trying to do. Making it so it would push up ridges over the rows would cover the seed and also be used to hill up the rows.

[salmonslayer]

We use a middle buster as an all around plow to break up hard packed soil, make furrows, and dig up potatoes.

[ksfarmer]

My potato plow is a bottom off a old lister corn planter, welded to a tool bar for 3-pt. Works great to dig taters, and I use it to list furrows to plant taters in, then I drag a harrow down the rows to cover them. I also have a 2 row dempster corn planter on 3-pt to plant sweet corn. I also have a 2 bottom fordson plow. All handy to have with nearly a 2 acre garden.

[T-Bone 369]

Mine is built with parts off the old bone pile - I think the sweep came off a Lister. It's nice as it is wide enough to get the job done and sits flat enough and has a rounded profile so that it goes not cut very many spuds. I make one pass, pick up the taters then make another pass slightly off center on each side of the row to get the outlyers. That gets almost all the spuds (I found a couple when I fall plowed last year out of 200 lbs of seed planted). I also use it to open furrows to plant them. I have a couple of pics - it's not pretty but works great.

[Stephen in SOKY]

I just use a simple cheap middlebuster ($125) to open trench and to dig taters as well:



A set of hilling disks on the G to cover:



Agri-Supply sells both the hilling disks and a Keulavtor frame to mount on a 3 PH.

3 Pt Keulavator Frame

[Stephen in SOKY]

T-bone, that's a dandy use of a flat drawbar.

[RonM]

I bought one for drainage at Tractor Supply for 135 a couple years ago...

[NVSmith]

-I don't know what quantity of potatoes you want, but some years back I was shown an alternate method of growing them. Instead of going down, go up!
-Think of this as "grow box" for Solanum tuberosum. The system requires an investment of tme, labor and a little money but it does work.
-Start by putting a 1' high ring 3 or 4' in diameter. Cut up food safe plastic drums work. The ring requires two things: a lip to guide the following ring and a hatch to reach in and harvest.
-As the potato plant grows, keep adding soil and more rings until the growth stops.
-An advantage of this is the ability to reach in and follow the growth of the crop and to do some early harvesting.
-This, obviously, will not work for commercial gardening but will work for a home garden.

[FarmboyBill]

AS said, whether its called a middle buster, or as I knew it, Get yourself an old lister as shown in the pics. I have a horse lister, and I also have a 1 bottom AC plow. Im going to find another lister, and exchange out the lister for the moldboard on the AC, and ill have something to plow taters up with, and hill them also.

[jwal10]

I use this type system. I find a middle buster shovel on a S-tine vibrates when run at just the right speed to shake the dirt off and lay the potatoes right on top. Check the video....James

http://shop.woodwardcrossingscountry...bar-76A386.htm

[Plowpoint]

I use a single bottom plow on my farm tractor.

I have to plow one way to get the furrow started, then go the other way to make the other side of it. It works pretty well, through granted it takes twice as much fuel to do what a potato plow would do in short order. (And yes they do make them and are quite easy to find here in the Northeast anyway).

[m33036272]

farmers in wyo &mt used to pull a unit with a flat blade that dug under row and dumped over a chain so potatoes fell on top of row behind unit just go along and pick up potatoes saw this used on as small as 100 ft rows still a few around

[FarmboyBill]

Thats good for makeing the furrow to plant PP, BUT You couldnt dig them that way without sliceing a bunch.

I got an OLD steel wheel 1 bottom AC 1 16 that Im going to find an old walking lister and put the moldboard from it on the AC. Im getting too old to walk behind a lister. I dont know why that thing nearly causes me to have a heart attack, but it sure does.

[Plowpoint]

I guess I should have read the question better, I thought you were talking about sowing potatoes not harvesting them! LOL Here in Maine it is planting season and not harvest season so that is what made me post what I did.

You are right though, that is a furrow only trick, and like the guy after me said, we use a potato digger (like he described) to get the potatoes out. In fact the one we use has been around quite awhile. Last year I was plowing up a conservation ditch that never worked in the first place, and drug up a potato digger bed chain. The darn thing went through every moldboard I had and I had to beat most of those bars off with a maul. It was a 7 moldboard plow so that took some work!

Oh yeah and the conservation ditch, that was built in 1947 so you could say our potato digger is old.

[jwal10]

Spedo CPP-T - Tram Sales

[Rob30]

Thanks for all the responses. I have seen sililar plows as the one in the pictures. That is what I am looking for. I thought about getting one with two plows on it. One behind each tire. That way I could off set the tractor on another pass and use it for hilling the potatoes. As far as harvesting them we will try to find an old harvester, one of the ones that lift the potatoes onto a chain. I buddy of mine has one that loads a small wagon right beding it.
We don't bury too deep because of the clay. We cover with some old compost and then cover further with old hay as mulch. I have seen guys that actually grow the potatos right under the mulch.