[AT] garden question; potatoes

[jtchall at nc.rr.com]

Greg, buzzard wings are all we use to bed and cultivate unless it is real 
cloddy soil, then we'll put on the rolling cultivators. If your land is tore 
up sufficiently you should not have any problems bending them. We've been 
running them longer than I can remember and I don't know of any that got 
bent (Dads 2 Super A's were used to cultivate 25 acres of tobacco for many 
years). I imagine they are made out of some sort of tempered steel. Don't 
know about the quality of stuff agri-supply sells but it should be decent 
for a garden. Occasionally we have gotten cheap quality rear sweeps and had 
those to bend. Nothing wrong with disc hillers and they definitely work 
better in trash.

John Hall


-----Original Message----- 
From: Greg Hass
Sent: Friday, June 21, 2013 5:45 PM
To: at at lists.antique-tractor.com
Subject: Re: [AT] garden question; potatoes

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



_______________________________________________
AT mailing list
http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at