Large Gardens Made Easy
Back in the time before the invention of tractors, growing a crop was seriously hard work. Tremendous amounts of laborers and farm animals were needed to maintain a field or garden. Fast forward to today! Farm Implements combined with a tractors 3 point hitch will allow you to produce the same results while cutting the cost of manpower. In the age of the Internet, you can research, watch demos, and even order these attachments directly online and have them delivered without getting out of your chair.
Today, most tractors provide a 3 point hitch system coupled with a PTO hook up to make short work of even the most difficult farming and gardening tasks. This allows you to connect plows, rototiller cultivators, disc harrows, tillers, fertilizer spreaders, and planters just to name a few, but let's not jump ahead. Some farming implements are going to be powered by the PTO of the tractor, while other are just connected and pulled behind the tractor. If you have a tractor with a front end loader then you will also be able to connect a multitude of other attachments to the front of your tractor.
Garden tractors can greatly benefit from having a front end loader installed. Most tractor owners use this to attach a bucket to their tractor, but this is only one of many attachments that can be used if you have a universal quick attach hitch on your loader. Many farmers not only have crops, but livestock as well that need hay carried to and from pastures and fields. 4 in 1 buckets for front end loaders are a good example of how to utilize your loader for more uses.
When you have chosen the spot for your garden, the first implement you will use on your tractor is a plow. People have been plowing their fields since before the time of Julius Caesar. Farmers in that time used oxen and mules to pull their plows. Now we have tractors to do this hard work instead of livestock, and aren't we all glad? Traditional plows today are called turning plows because they simply turn the soil over on the moldboard. You also need a york rake all the time! These farm implements have advanced tremendously in their design in the past 100 years.
The second step to planting a great garden is simple. You need to bust up the large chunks of dirt known to farmers everywhere as "Clods". There are two different farm tractor attachments that are made to accomplish this task. The first is a Disc Harrow, and these are non-PTO powered farm tractor implements. They come in many sizes to accomodate the needs for compact tractor implements as well as very large versions to suit the large farm tractors as well. Basically these run over the clods and bust them into smaller ones. After several passes with a disc harrow, the soil will reach a good consistency for planting your crops in.
Using a rototiller instead of a disc harrow is sure to save you time when getting your fields ready to plant. You can adjust the rear gate open or closed to fine tune to coarseness of your gardens soil. If you set it open, then you will have larger pieces of dirt that will not be broken up. If you close the rear gate, the tiller literally chops up the ground, then busts the remaining clods against the gate producing very loose soil for planting. One pass with a tractor tiller over your garden and you are ready for the next step in creating a beautiful garden your plants will love.
Your soil has now been plowed, tilled or broken up with a disc, and is now ready for a garden bedder. Also known as a garden hiller, this attachment will mound up the soil for planting and basically creates a raised bed for your seed to lay in. Some of the larger field bedders will have a sweep option on the outside of the bedder wheels to pull up the hard spots that are left from your tractors tires in your garden. A garden bedder should be fully adjustable to create wide or narrow beds depending on what you are planting.
Once all of the garden is planted, garden farmers are faced with the task of keeping weeds and unwanted plants from choking out the intended plants of their crop. There are two ways to do this as well. You can get up in the morning and use an old fashioned hoe, or you can use a garden tractor cultivator. Basically, you attach the cultivator to the three point hitch of the tractor and space your shanks apart so that you do not disturb the roots of the planted crop and drive down each row of your field or garden. The cultivator will rip up the unwanted weeds and leave your crop intact. Once your crop grows enough, you will find that it will shade the areas beside the row and prevent the wide spread growth of the weeds.
Today, most tractors provide a 3 point hitch system coupled with a PTO hook up to make short work of even the most difficult farming and gardening tasks. This allows you to connect plows, rototiller cultivators, disc harrows, tillers, fertilizer spreaders, and planters just to name a few, but let's not jump ahead. Some farming implements are going to be powered by the PTO of the tractor, while other are just connected and pulled behind the tractor. If you have a tractor with a front end loader then you will also be able to connect a multitude of other attachments to the front of your tractor.
Garden tractors can greatly benefit from having a front end loader installed. Most tractor owners use this to attach a bucket to their tractor, but this is only one of many attachments that can be used if you have a universal quick attach hitch on your loader. Many farmers not only have crops, but livestock as well that need hay carried to and from pastures and fields. 4 in 1 buckets for front end loaders are a good example of how to utilize your loader for more uses.
When you have chosen the spot for your garden, the first implement you will use on your tractor is a plow. People have been plowing their fields since before the time of Julius Caesar. Farmers in that time used oxen and mules to pull their plows. Now we have tractors to do this hard work instead of livestock, and aren't we all glad? Traditional plows today are called turning plows because they simply turn the soil over on the moldboard. You also need a york rake all the time! These farm implements have advanced tremendously in their design in the past 100 years.
The second step to planting a great garden is simple. You need to bust up the large chunks of dirt known to farmers everywhere as "Clods". There are two different farm tractor attachments that are made to accomplish this task. The first is a Disc Harrow, and these are non-PTO powered farm tractor implements. They come in many sizes to accomodate the needs for compact tractor implements as well as very large versions to suit the large farm tractors as well. Basically these run over the clods and bust them into smaller ones. After several passes with a disc harrow, the soil will reach a good consistency for planting your crops in.
Using a rototiller instead of a disc harrow is sure to save you time when getting your fields ready to plant. You can adjust the rear gate open or closed to fine tune to coarseness of your gardens soil. If you set it open, then you will have larger pieces of dirt that will not be broken up. If you close the rear gate, the tiller literally chops up the ground, then busts the remaining clods against the gate producing very loose soil for planting. One pass with a tractor tiller over your garden and you are ready for the next step in creating a beautiful garden your plants will love.
Your soil has now been plowed, tilled or broken up with a disc, and is now ready for a garden bedder. Also known as a garden hiller, this attachment will mound up the soil for planting and basically creates a raised bed for your seed to lay in. Some of the larger field bedders will have a sweep option on the outside of the bedder wheels to pull up the hard spots that are left from your tractors tires in your garden. A garden bedder should be fully adjustable to create wide or narrow beds depending on what you are planting.
Once all of the garden is planted, garden farmers are faced with the task of keeping weeds and unwanted plants from choking out the intended plants of their crop. There are two ways to do this as well. You can get up in the morning and use an old fashioned hoe, or you can use a garden tractor cultivator. Basically, you attach the cultivator to the three point hitch of the tractor and space your shanks apart so that you do not disturb the roots of the planted crop and drive down each row of your field or garden. The cultivator will rip up the unwanted weeds and leave your crop intact. Once your crop grows enough, you will find that it will shade the areas beside the row and prevent the wide spread growth of the weeds.
