What Tractor Equipment Creates The Best Gardens

By Rick Nash

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.

What makes a tractor so useful are the Power Take Off and the 3pt. Hitch. This nifty invention has created the need for an array of compact tractor implements, each with it's own purpose in your garden. Some implements need to be powered by the tractor in order to work properly so it is a good idea to have some horsepower in your PTO capability. Attachments can also be added to the front end of a tractor if you have a tractor front end loader installed. These Tractor Loader Attachments will ensure that you get the most out of your tractor.

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.

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.

If you don't have the time to work your garden over several times with a disc harrow, then you may want to consider owning a PTO Rotary Tiller. These attachments for garden tractors simply hook up to your tractor's three point hitch and has curved blades that will produce excellent results in only one pass. There are many sizes from large to small to choose from, and compact tractor tillers are an excellent choice for smaller tractors. If you have a large tractor, you may want to choose three point hitch tillers that are as wide as your tractor.

Using a garden bedder to create a raised mound of soil for you to plant in is very important to this process. Taking the time to adjust your bedder properly will help your seed to have the right environment to flourish in, and will also make planting your seed a whole lot easier. If you get it just right, you can almost eliminate the need for a furrowing attachment depending on what you are planting. It is great to use a bedder with "tire sweeps" on the outside to pull up the compacted ground from you running over it with your tractor.

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.

- 29857

About the Author:

Sign Up for our Free Newsletter

Enter email address here