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The advantage of motor cultivators over motor blocks is maneuverability and ease of control, but they are weaker in power. Such garden equipment is more intended for loosening the soil in the garden, greenhouse or vegetable garden. However, many gardeners dig potatoes with a motor cultivator, attaching a trailer mechanism to it.
Why is it sometimes necessary to speed up harvesting?
Gardeners know that manually shoveling potatoes is a complex and time-consuming process. At first, all weeds and large dry potato tops have to be removed from the garden. Further, they dig the ground with a shovel or pitchfork, throwing the tubers to the surface. Behind you, the holes still need to be buried so that rolled potatoes dug from the next row are not sprinkled into them.
Manual digging of potatoes takes place for more than one day, which is especially unacceptable during the approach of bad weather. With the onset of the rainy season, undigged tubers begin to re-sprout. Many potatoes rot or change flavor. If digging up the crop occurs after rain, all tubers covered with mud will have to be washed, which is why they are poorly stored in the cellar in winter. To avoid all the problems with harvesting, and speed up this process helps a cultivator or walk-behind tractor.
What garden equipment is better to give preference
Garden equipment is produced in various modifications. You can watch the video on how motor cultivators, mini-tractors and motoblocks work in different areas. Some machines are made for a narrowly focused task, while others can do almost everything in the garden.
Motoblocks are multifunctional. The equipment is adapted to work with additional attachments: a plow, a grass mower, a 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 the unit, taking into account what work it is designed for, as well as the size of the garden and the composition of the soil:
- If digging potatoes will take place on a plot larger than five acres, then only a walk-behind tractor with a capacity of 5 hp or more will cope with the task. With. Such a machine is expensive, more difficult to manage and weighs at least 60 kg.
- For a country garden with a size of 2-3 acres, it will be enough to use a motor cultivator. The video of the presented different models shows how easy it is to operate such equipment. The mass 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 desired, you can independently attach a potato digger to the motor cultivator, weld metal wheels, and use it where there is light soil.
- In gardens from 3 to 5 acres, it is hard for a motor cultivator to work. Here, for digging potatoes, it is better to use a walk-behind tractor with a small power of 3 to 5 liters. With. Such units weigh in the range of 40–60 kg.
To each technique, you can attach a factory-made or home-made tow hitch. Conventionally, all potato diggers are divided into two types:
- The simplest fan models consist of a cutting part, on top of which metal rods are welded. Undermined potatoes fan out to the side, and the soil is sifted through the cracks between the rods.
- Vibrating potato diggers consist of a cutting part – a plowshare, and a vibrating sieve.
Next, we will look at how to dig up potatoes with each type of towing mechanism.
Harvesting with different types of potato diggers
So, the harvesting process begins with the installation of a potato digger on the machine, after which a layer of earth is cut along with the tubers.
Cleaning with a fan potato digger
The principle of digging potatoes with such a device resembles the use of a shovel, only instead of its own strength, the power of a motor cultivator is used. The towing device is fixed behind the machine at a certain angle. The slope is set individually, so that the spout of the digger does not go deep into the ground and pry all the potatoes. If tilted incorrectly, the potato digger will wedge into the ground or cut potatoes.
Angle adjustment is made by holes on the digger bar. When properly positioned, the tubers are thrown onto a fan of rods. Here the soil is sifted, and the crop remains in the garden behind a motor cultivator.
Cleaning with a vibrating potato digger
With the help of this mechanism, we dig potatoes with a motor cultivator in rows up to 40 cm wide and up to 20 cm deep. Although it is better to use such a trailed cultivator with a walk-behind tractor. The cultivator simply does not have enough power to pull it along.
Rows with potatoes are cut by a plowshare. The tubers, together with the soil, fall on a vibrating grate, where the earth is sifted. The clean harvest is thrown into the garden, where it is then simply collected in a bucket. Some of these models of potato diggers have a conveyor belt to improve the process of movement and cleaning of tubers.
The video shows harvesting potatoes with a walk-behind tractor:
Results
For mechanical harvesting, there is one golden rule: in order to minimize losses, the rows should be made as even as possible.