[AT] Cultivating potatoes

[charlie hill]

When I went from one row plows on an Allis D-14 to 2 rows with a rolling 
cultivator behind a Massey Furgeson 30 ( my uncle's tractor) it was like 
getting out of a shool bus and getting in a sports car.

Charlie


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Seith" <seithr at denison.edu>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 11:57 AM
Subject: [AT] Cultivating potatoes


> All this discussion about different types of cultivators has reminded me 
> how fussy we were about cultivating potatoes back home. Hilling potatoes 
> was certainly one operation, but by no means the only one. Lots of other 
> work was done throughout the season.
>
> We had a tiny homemade rotary cultivator that fit in the front gangs of 
> the Farmall A. It had only three spiked wheels that sort of resembled 
> small versions of these:
>
> http://www.ent.iastate.edu/Imagegal/misc/rotaryhoe.html
>
> It was used to break the crust if you got heavy rains after planting and 
> before emergence. Ran it right down the middle of the row, obviously held 
> so as to go rather shallow. Go too deep, and you'd throw the potatoes 
> right out of the ground.
>
> After emergence, there was a "potato weeder" that started life as a piece 
> of horse-drawn equipment but eventually moved over to a three-point hitch 
> mount. Again, you had to be careful using it, but it would tease out a lot 
> of weeds.
>
> Most actual hilling was done with disk blades mounted in the front 
> cultivator gangs. But later in the season, just before the vines died down 
> and made further cultivating impossible, we ran through the fields one 
> last time with only rear cultivators mounted. These looked like miniature 
> middlebuster plows -- maybe 10 inches wide -- and would make the old 
> Farmall boil on a hot day. But they threw a lot of sandy loam around!
>
> Best,
> Bob Seith
> 1953 Farmall Cub
>
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