What Tractor Equipment Creates The Best Gardens

Back in the time before the invention of tractors, growing a crop was seriously hard work. Tremendous amounts of laborers and farm animals were needed to maintain a field or garden. Fast forward to today! Farm Implements combined with a tractors 3 point hitch will allow you to produce the same results while cutting the cost of manpower. In the age of the Internet, you can research, watch demos, and even order these attachments directly online and have them delivered without getting out of your chair.

What makes a tractor so useful are the Power Take Off and the 3 point 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. A good example of this is a rototiller . 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.

Garden tractors can greatly benefit from having a front end loader installed. Most tractor owners use this to attach a bucket to their tractor, but this is only one of many attachments that can be used if you have a universal quick attach hitch on your loader. Many farmers not only have crops, but livestock as well that need hay carried to and from pastures and fields. 4 in 1 buckets for front end loaders are a good example of how to utilize your loader for more uses.

As a rule of thumb, there are certain tractor implements that should be considered as standard equipment when using your tractor for producing a garden. Farm Plows are one on these must have attachments. A plow will make is easy to flip over the topsoil to create a good environment for your crops to grow in abundance. Plowing your garden is one step that cannot be skipped, and there are many different garden plows to fit any size tractor. Consider owning a york rake as well.

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.

Your soil has now been plowed, tilled or broken up with a disc, and is now ready for a garden bedder. Also known as a garden hiller, this attachment will mound up the soil for planting and basically creates a raised bed for your seed to lay in. Some of the larger field bedders will have a sweep option on the outside of the bedder wheels to pull up the hard spots that are left from your tractors tires in your garden. A garden bedder should be fully adjustable to create wide or narrow beds depending on what you are planting.

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.

Before you drive down to your local Tractor Equipment store, if you are looking for American Made Attachments for your tractor . . . try the Everything Attachments website