Have you ever tried to plant and maintain a garden without a tractor? If your garden has any size to it at all, then you know first hand that maintaining your crops is a lot of hard work. Now throw a tractor into the equation and you just turned your full time gardening job into a hobby. With the right garden tractor implements you can grow and maintain a wide variety of vegetables.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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