Every Hobby Farmer can get Better

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.

Tractors provide two different ways to attach farm implements and are standard features on most compact and full sized tractors. The 3 point hitch system allows a garden farmer to connect a seemingly endless array of tractor equipment to the rear of a tractor. Many of these will also need to be powered by what is known as the Power Take Off or PTO, and a good example of garden tractor attachments that would need to be powered by the tractor is a tractor rotary tiller and if you were putting up a fence around your garden, a post hole digger.

Front End Loaders on a Tractor with a quick attach hitch provides the smart farmer a way to connect not only a bucket, but also a variety of other useful farm tractor implements as well. If your tractor has auxiliary hydraulics available, you will also be able to use a tractor grapple bucket, tractor pallet forks, and pole handlers just to name a few.

As a rule of thumb, there are certain tractor implements that should be considered as standard equipment when using your tractor for producing a garden. Farm Plows are one on these must have attachments. A plow will make is easy to flip over the topsoil to create a good environment for your crops to grow in abundance. Plowing your garden is one step that cannot be skipped, and there are many different garden plows to fit any size tractor.

Once you have used your turning plow on your garden, the very next move is to go ahead and eliminate the large hard dirt clods. For this next step you will need either a disc harrow, or a rotary tiller. Depending on the size of disc harrow your tractor can pull, the disc harrow is normally the cheaper of the two, but requires more work in the form of several passes to get the soil prepared to plant in. It is simply connected to the 3pt. hitch and pulled behind the tractor and lowered so that the discs are slicing the dirt clods into smaller pieces.

Considering the tremendous amount of time that can be saved, many gardeners prefer to use a PTO driven tiller instead of a disc harrow. Yes, the rotary tillers do cost more up front, but this is easily justified if you have a large garden that you can prepare for planting your crops in one pass instead of two or more depending on how fine you like your soil to be. One more thing to consider when buying a tiller is whether or not your tractor has the horsepower to pull a tiller the full width of your tractor. If not, look for a tiller that has a clevis hitch so that you can offset the tiller to clear out one side of your tire tracks to keep from ending up with a hard spot in your garden.

Now that the soil ready to plant, the next step is to create a raised garden bed to plant your crop in. A great tool for this is known as a garden hiller or garden bedders. You can find a 3 in 1 tool that will allow you to complete the next couple steps with a single farm tractor attachment. Everything Attachments offers a garden cultivator with a bolt on bedder, furrowing attachment, and cultivator all in one. Once you have created you raised beds, many garden farmers tend to make a pass over each row with a furrowing attachment to make a small V into each row. This creates a place for the gardener to place their seed and easily cover it up with the soil on either side.

Now comes the not so fun part of a garden . . . taking care of the weeds that can strangle your crop. You basically have two choices in this area, hoe your garden (don’t recommend it if you have a large garden and enjoy standing upright) or you can attach a garden cultivator to your tractor. While your garden plants are young and still fighting against any unwanted competitors for sunlight, water, and minerals you will want to get rid of the competition. The premise is to stradle your plants with your tractor, and the cultivator will pull up the weeds growing in your garden. Be careful not to get your cultivator shanks too close to your crop so you do not disturb the roots, but get close enough to pull out your weeds. Once your crop is big enough to shade the area on either side of your row, you are pretty much in the clear.

Before you drive down to your local Tractor Implements store, if you are looking for American Made Attachments for your tractor . . . try the Everything Attachments website

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