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Weeding is an important step in the potato growing process. This procedure allows not only to remove all weeds from the garden, but also to loosen the soil. Thus, nitrogen freely enters the roots along with air, stimulating the growth of potatoes. Recently, gardeners have given preference to special motor-cultivators, with the help of which it is much easier to till the soil. Let’s look at how weeding potatoes with a motor cultivator is carried out, and which harrows are best used for these purposes.
Weeding potatoes with a flat cutter
Many gardeners claim that a flat cutter is the most convenient tool for weeding potatoes. Distinguish these devices in width. There are 4 types in total:
- “P-240”;
- “P-320”;
- “P-400”;
- “P-700”.
Accordingly, a flat cutter with the designation 240 processes a row spacing of 240 mm wide in one pass, and a flat cutter with the number 700 can cope with a distance of almost 3 times more. It is not necessary to use only flat cutters of the same type. They can be combined or used alone.
Holes on the stand of the flat cutter allow you to adjust the height and depth of plowing. These fixtures are made of high quality steel and can serve you for many years. The metal for the cutting part undergoes heat treatment, which makes the flat cutter durable and hardy.
There are flat cutters with a ripper that work the soil better. The ripper is made of eight round plates, which have peculiar cutouts. Such disks are located on the axis and begin to rotate when moving. Also on the design there is a spring that presses the ripper to the soil. This is a great tool for those who don’t like doing the same job twice. The flat cutter-ripper perfectly copes with the task, removing all weeds from the row spacing, as well as loosening the soil.
Potato weeding with the help of a walk-behind tractor and a hedgehog
Everyone will agree that weeding potatoes with an ordinary hoe takes a lot of time, and also requires a lot of effort and endurance. It is especially difficult for owners of large plots of land. In this case, you can not do without a motor cultivator. In addition, the choice of harrows for weeding is quite large. For example, a cultivator for inter-row cultivation of potatoes called a hedgehog will do an excellent job of removing weeds in potato plantings.
This device consists of rings of different sizes, on which teeth and spikes are located. The hedgehog has a cone-shaped appearance. Usually, 2 such devices are used for cultivating a garden, placing them at the same distance from each other at an angle. You can make your own hedgehog at home. The main thing is to choose high-quality material and correctly assemble the structure. Often discs are used for this, which have shown themselves poorly in the process of weeding. The fact is that between the disks the earth and plucked weeds are constantly stuffed.
The hedgehog is a smaller version of a large tractor power harrow and operates on the same principle. It easily penetrates into the ground. And then, rotating, it loosens the soil, simultaneously pulling out weeds with roots from the aisles.
Harrow for weeding potatoes
Some gardeners prefer the so-called mesh harrows. This device consists of a hinged frame, inside which a toothed mesh is stretched. The mesh has hexagonal or square cells about 20 cm in size. The teeth are wrapped down to the ground. A hexagonal mesh is more convenient, since the teeth in it are arranged in a checkerboard pattern. But, if you install a square grid at an angle of 45 ° relative to the direction of the walk-behind tractor itself, then you can also achieve a staggered arrangement of teeth.
The mesh harrow has its advantages and disadvantages. The positives include the following:
- The harrow covers a large area at the same time.
- The device can be easily built with your own hands.
- Can be used together with other ploughing tools.
But unfortunately, there are equally important disadvantages. The harrow does not loosen the soil. Because of this, additional procedures have to be carried out, which takes a lot of time. Some gardeners prefer to use a harrow to till the soil after plowing the soil in the spring or in the beds before the first shoots of potatoes appear.
Conclusion
Nowadays, walk-behind tractors are gaining more and more popularity. This is not surprising, because such a technique greatly facilitates our work and saves time. Cultivators are especially needed in large areas with potatoes. And all sorts of devices make the task even easier. In this article, we examined the most common tools for weeding potatoes with a walk-behind tractor. It would also be good to watch the video below, which tells and clearly shows how weeding the garden is carried out in this way.
