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Growing a good potato crop is only half the battle. Ahead is no less difficult work related to harvesting tubers. Digging potatoes is hard. If the country garden is no more than two or three acres, then you can handle it with a bayonet shovel. On large areas, digging potatoes with a walk-behind tractor greatly simplifies the harvesting process. The technique itself will cope with the digging of tubers. All you have to do is drive the motor cultivator and harvest the crop behind it.
Benefits of using garden equipment
Gardeners who have poorly mastered the technique are afraid to dig potatoes with walk-behind tractors for fear of harming the crop. In fact, these fears are not unfounded. If the machine with accessories is not set up correctly, digging up the crop will end up with chopped tubers.
The simplest potato digger is bent at a slight angle. When potato harvesting begins, the slope of the plow is adjusted until the optimum depth of penetration is reached. Properly adjusted equipment easily travels around the garden, and very rarely cuts tubers.
When we dig potatoes with a walk-behind tractor, we get the following benefits:
- First of all, digging potatoes with a walk-behind tractor is much easier than doing it by hand. Moreover, not only energy is saved, but also your own time.
- Only harvesting potatoes with a walk-behind tractor allows us to extract the crop from the ground as quickly as possible before the approach of bad weather.
- The crop is extracted from the ground as much as possible. Losses during mechanized harvesting are small.
Garden equipment facilitates the hard work of a gardener, and you need to be friends with it.
Proper equipment setup is the key to successful harvesting
Harvesting potatoes with a Neva walk-behind tractor or any other motor-cultivator is performed in the same way. The machine is used only as a traction mechanism. Of course, the speed of harvesting depends on the power of the unit, but the main adjustment is carried out on the trailer.
The photo shows the simplest fan plow. A pointed nose cuts a layer of earth, and throws tubers on curved rods, the entire crop remains on the surface of the earth.
A number of holes are drilled on the potato digger bar. That’s what they need to adjust. Rearranging the trailing mechanism up or down the holes, change the angle of inclination of the cutting nose. The greater its slope, the deeper the potato digger will sink into the ground while the walk-behind tractor is moving.
Experienced machine operators make devices that allow narrowing and expanding the distance between the wheels of a walk-behind tractor. This allows you to adjust the row spacing even at the stage of planting tubers. Naturally, it becomes easier to dig potatoes with a walk-behind tractor. With widely spaced wheels, the likelihood of tubers falling under them is reduced.
The video provides an overview of the fan model of the trailer mechanism:
Constructive varieties of potato diggers
In principle, you can dig potatoes with a walk-behind tractor not only with the help of a fan potato digger. There are many models of the trailer mechanism of factory and home-made production. Let’s look at the three main commonly used potato diggers, and how they work:
- The vibrating potato digger consists of a sieve and a plowshare. When we dig potatoes with a walk-behind tractor, the towing mechanism vibrates. The plowshare cuts a layer of earth along with potatoes, after which it directs it to the grate. From vibration, the soil wakes up through a sieve, and the tubers roll down the rods and remain on the surface of the earth. Such harvesting of potatoes with a walk-behind tractor is considered the most productive, but it requires complex adjustment of the trailer mechanism.
- The trailing mechanism of the conveyor type works on the principle of a vibration model. When we dig potatoes with a walk-behind tractor, the soil is similarly cut with a plowshare, after which, together with the tubers, it enters a special platform. On the conveyor, the earth with tops is sifted out and only a clean crop remains, held by a towing device. The conveyor model is more reliable and easier to use, but is sensitive to soil density.
- The fan potato digger is also called the arrow mechanism, since the plow nose resembles the tip of an arrow. With a properly adjusted slope, the spout cuts the soil, and the crop flies to the side along the rods, from which a fan is welded behind the boom. The mechanism is simple, reliable and can be used on difficult soils. The main thing is that the power of the machine is enough.
Motor blocks and motor cultivators are on sale. The first type of machine has more features and is much more powerful. Motor cultivators are weaker, therefore they are more intended for loosening the soil. But these units can also be used as a traction mechanism when digging crops on soft soil.
As you can see, digging potatoes with a Neva walk-behind tractor or a unit of another brand is the same. The difference lies only in the trailer mechanism.