[AT] Am I crazy?

[charlie hill]

Thanks Greg.  That does help.  I think I know what they do now.
It seems like it would be a pretty slow operation.  Not to well suited to 21 
century farming but it would probably be good for a small garden.

Charlie
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Greg Hass" <gkhass at avci.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 8:48 PM
Subject: Re: [AT] Am I crazy?


>I will try to take a shot at how the weed controllers work.
>
> First of all,  they only replace the front tooth of a cultivator.  You 
> still need the rest of the teeth to clean out the centers.  When mounted 
> on the tractor cultivator, one shank goes on each side of the row.  When 
> mounted upright in the cultivator  you essentially have 2 miniature grader 
> blades on each side of the row of crop.  The front blade is about 3" x 6", 
> the back blade a little shorter.  They do not lay flat and slice under the 
> soil like a normal cultivator tooth.  The front blade is set to go about 
> 1" deep, and (like a grader blade) set on an angle.  It pushes the top 
> inch of soil away from the plant, leveling the ground and pushing any 
> weeds and clods of dirt 4" away from the row.  The front blades are set to 
> go as close to the row as possible without catching the plants.
>
> The back two blades are also set at an angle, and 1-1/2" or so deeper than 
> the front 2 blades.  (Remember, you've got a set of blades on each side of 
> the row.)   The back blades are shorter because you don't want to grab the 
> weeds and clods that the front set pushed away from the plant.  The back 
> blades are then like 2 short grader blades grading the freshly exposed 
> dirt toward the plant, and it rolls the dirt up against the plant under 
> the leaves with less danger of covering them than with a regular 
> cultivator (which more or less throws the dirt toward the plant).  This is 
> why they work so well on crops like edible beans in our area, because it 
> more or less grades the dirt under the leaves and covers the weeds without 
> covering as many beans.  This is also the reason why they do not work in 
> hard ground.  Because they are just shoving the soil one way or another, 
> they have no actual tooth to dig into the ground.  Hope this helps to make 
> it clear and not confuse the issue even more.
>
> In theory, they maybe could be used to hill potatoes, but they would have 
> to be adjusted so the front blade did nothing and only the rear blade 
> moved dirt.  But because the rear blades are so small, you would at most 
> be able to move 10% of the dirt necessary to hill potatoes.
>
> Greg Hass
> From the tip of Michigan's Thumb
>
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