[AT] garden question; potatoes

[Greg Hass]

When I first got my Cub I didn't know about Agri-Supply , but I did see 
pictures of "buzzard wings" in the Cub cultivator manual. As IH did not 
make them any more I decided to make my own. I followed the pictures in 
the book as closely as possible. Out to the potato patch I went. All 
went well for a row until I hit a rock,which buckled the wing back. 
Figuring I hadn't used strong enough metal I welded reinforcing metal to 
the "buzzard wings" .  Back to the potato patch where I hit another rock 
and badly bent them again. Wondering where I went wrong , I got out the 
cultivator book again. I could see nothing wrong with my design. However 
in the book the wings were in dark print and the rest of the cultivator 
was in "background" print. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the 
buzzard wings were not mounted on the front row, but one row back. On 
the front row just ahead of the point of each buzzard wing was a 
cultivator tooth in line with and just a little deeper than the wing 
point. That way if you hit a rock or something else, the much stronger 
tooth would loosen it and push it out of the way. Also the tooth would 
loosen the dirt so it could easily be hilled. After adding the teeth I 
used the homemade buzzard wings for quite a few years without a problem 
and they worked just fine. However I always wanted to try hilling disks, 
which I did buy from Agri-supply, and have used for the last couple of 
years. Both ways seem to work equally well, the only difference being if 
you have any trash the disks do not drag but cut through it. I have been 
tempted to buy some "buzzard wings"  just to have the "real" thing. I 
guess the purpose of this post is just to show that when something 
doesn't work; the devil is in the details.
          Greg Hass