Content
The advantage of motorized cultivators over walk-behind tractors is maneuverability and ease of control, but they are weaker in power. Such gardening equipment is more intended for loosening the soil in the garden, greenhouse or vegetable garden. However, many gardeners dig potatoes with a motorized cultivator and attach a tow mechanism to it.
Why is it sometimes necessary to speed up harvesting?
Vegetable garden owners know that manual harvesting potatoes under the shovel is a complex process that takes a lot of time. First, you have to remove everything from the garden weeds and large dry potato tops. Next, with a shovel or digging up the ground with pitchforks, throwing the tubers to the surface. You still need to bury the holes behind you, so as not to sprinkle rolled potatoes dug from the next row into them.
Manual digging potatoes happens more than one day, which is especially unacceptable during the approach of bad weather. With the onset of the rainy season, undug tubers begin to germinate again. Many potatoes rot or change their taste. If the crop is dug up after rain, all the tubers covered in mud will have to be washed, which is why they are poorly stored in the cellar in winter.A motor cultivator or walk-behind tractor helps to avoid all problems with harvesting and speed up this process.
Which gardening equipment is better to choose?
Gardening equipment is produced in different modifications. You can watch the video to see how motor cultivators, mini-tractors and walk-behind tractors work in areas of different sizes. Some machines are made for narrowly focused tasks, while others can do almost everything in the garden.
Walk-behind tractors are multifunctional. The equipment is adapted to work with additional attachments: plow, grass mower, potato digger etc. The motor cultivator is designed mainly for loosening the soil, but it is a machine, therefore it is used by many gardeners for digging potatoes.
You need to buy a unit taking into account the work for which it is designed, as well as the size of the garden and the composition of the soil:
- If potato digging takes place on a plot of more than five acres, then only a walk-behind tractor with a power of 5 liters or more will cope with the task. With. Such a machine is expensive, more difficult to operate and weighs at least 60 kg.
- For a country garden of 2–3 acres in size, using a motor cultivator will be sufficient. The video of the different models presented shows how easy it is to operate such equipment. The weight of different motor cultivators varies from 10 to 30 kg. The power of the units is in the range of 1.5–2.5 liters. With. If you wish, you can attach a potato digger to the motor cultivator yourself, weld metal wheels, and use it where the soil is light.
- It is difficult for a motorized cultivator to work in gardens of 3 to 5 acres.Here, to dig up potatoes, it is better to use a walk-behind tractor with a low power of 3 to 5 hp. With. Such units weigh between 40–60 kg.
Each piece of equipment can be equipped with a factory-made or home-made trailer hitch. Conventionally, all potato diggers are divided into two types:
- The simplest fan models consist of a cutting part, to which metal rods are welded on top. The dug potatoes fly off to the side like a fan, and the soil is sifted out through the cracks between the rods.
- Vibrating potato diggers consist of a cutting part - a ploughshare, and a vibrating sieve.
Next, we will look at ways to dig up potatoes with each type of trailed mechanism.
Harvesting using different types of potato diggers
So, the harvesting process begins with installing a potato digger on the machine, after which the layer of soil along with the tubers is cut.
Harvesting with a fan potato digger
The principle of digging up potatoes with such a device is similar to using a shovel, only instead of using your own power, the power of a motor cultivator is used. The towbar is fixed at the rear of the car at a certain angle. The slope is set individually, so that the nose of the digger does not go deep into the ground and pry off all the potatoes. If tilted incorrectly, the potato digger will wedge into the ground or cut the potatoes.
The angle is adjusted through the holes on the digging bar. When positioned correctly, the pruned tubers are thrown onto a fan of twigs. Here the soil is sifted out, and the harvest remains in the garden behind the motorized cultivator.
Harvesting with a vibrating potato digger
Using this mechanism digging potatoes with a motor cultivator on rows up to 40 cm wide and up to 20 cm deep. Although such a trailed one is better used with a walk-behind tractor. The cultivator simply does not have enough power to pull it along.
Rows of potatoes are trimmed by a ploughshare. The tubers, along with the soil, fall onto a vibrating grid, where the soil is sifted out. The clean harvest is thrown into the garden, where it is then simply collected in a bucket. Some of these potato digger models have a conveyor belt to improve the process of moving and cleaning tubers.
The video demonstrates harvesting potatoes with a walk-behind tractor:
Results
There is one golden rule for mechanical harvesting: to reduce losses, the rows must be made as even as possible.
