[AT] Am I crazy?/Potato hilling

[Greg Hass]

Just came back from a long trek through the snow to the far barn, and mine 
say "Weed  Controller" on them.  They are almost identical to the picture 
with a few minor variations in the way the shanks are made.  I had around 
three sets in various stages of disrepair or missing parts, so I picked out 
the various parts and the ones I thought would work best and mounted them 
on my Cub for doing the garden.  Years ago my uncles had a Super-C with a 
4-row cultivator equipped with these "weed controllers."  They could 
cultivate twice as fast as we could and do a better job to boot, but my dad 
always said we couldn't afford a set for our cultivator.   Up until 20 
years ago they went extremely high at auction sales.  Now on the rare 
occasion that you do see them, they are just thrown in with other scrap 
iron.  However, they do do an excellent job of cultivating garden crops.

In my opinion (worth what you pay for it), these would not work very well 
for hilling potatoes due to the limited amount of dirt they will throw.  I 
pattern my potato hillers off of the ones pictured in the Cub 144 
Operator's Manual.  Mine are homemade, however I now find out that 
something almost identical is available commercially for just under 
$50.  In the January 2006 issue of the Agri Supply Buyer's Guide, go to 
page 19.  They are called "Layby Sweeps (Buzzard Wings) and are about 2/3 
of the way down the far righthand column on that page.  Or... you can find 
them online at http://www.agri-supply.com
They are listed under tillage.  There is a way (I can't remember how) to 
get a picture of them.   In the picture, the shank part is folded down. The 
part number is #29492.

The first time I used my homemade hillers, I hit a stone and bent them all 
to h***.  I straightened them all out, and on the second row of potatoes 
did it all over again.  Being in a bad mood by this time, I looked in the 
cultivator book and (upon careful looking) found they had mounted a 
righthand tooth and a lefthand tooth ahead of the hillers and running 
slightly deeper. The hillers are then mounted on the SECOND row of teeth on 
the cultivator. This way the tooth loosens the ground and takes up the 
shock of hitting the stones.  It now works great.

PS:  What someone else mentioned of the weed controllers is true.  People I 
have talked to say that in sand to clay loam, they work fine, but in heavy 
clay they will not penetrate and just slide along the top.

PPS:	If I were doing it again, I would buy the "buzzard wings" rather than 
trying to make them myself.  $50 really isn't that much buy today's standards.


Greg Hass
 From the tip of Michigan's Thumb