Every Hobby Farmer Can Get Better

The days of planting and maintaining a garden by hand are long gone. Tractors have been around for a pretty good while and have evolved into necessary equipment for gardening. The tractor implements that are being manufactured today to help create the highest yielding crops and are now readily available for purchase online and delivered directly to you.

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, post hole diggers 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.

Farm 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.

So, you may be asking yourself, what implements should I consider owning to create the best garden possible without having to pick up a hoe? There is a basic set of attachments take help to produce a healthy crop, so keep on reading. If you are planting a garden, a garden tractor plow is almost a necessity. A plow allows you to turn the earth and prepare the soil for planting your garden. If you have a smaller compact tractor then it is usually a good idea to use a One Bottom Plow. For larger tractors, a farm plow or two bottom plow is the better choice. This will allow you to plow your garden or field faster if your tractor has the horsepower to pull it.

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.

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.

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.

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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