[AT] Am I crazy?

[Larry D. Goss]

Greg, I'm gathering from your comments that you used these "shovels" as
the first pair next to the row without using corn shields.  Right?  We
always had corn shields in place and we moved them in-out, up-down to
accommodate the crop regardless of what it was.  We didn't have the
money to buy a bunch of different shovels, so the whole cultivator was
equipped with corn sweeps except for the fronts which were the right and
left single-winged styles that were mentioned in a previous post.

Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Greg Hass
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 7:48 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
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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