Bought a Middlebuster/Potato Plow

[Knight9]

I've been eyeing a potato plow for a while. Seen lots of folks on here who have used them with varying degrees of success. I picked up a Kodiak make. You can check them out at Kodiak I tried it out on the garden today, just to see how it would work. It pulled itself down very nicely and really did a good job of plowing up the garden soil.

I'm going to attempt to do a few small ditches with it. I expect I'll be able to start the ditch with the middlebuster and then may have to switch to the rear blade to finish it. I'm sure it will be interesting.

My only issue, as I expected, is that with the 3PH fully raised, the tip of the plow barely clears the ground. On uneven ground it digs in. I figured out that for distance transport (to the garden and back), it makes sense to undo the top link, pivot the plow flat and bungee the top of the plow to the 3PH lift arms. Keeps it nice and high off the ground. At the garden, just undo the bungee, slide in the top pin, and I was ready to go.

 

[familyman]

I don't have a garden, but I've do have a good sized area of ground that has to be swaled, and all of its soil moved to another part of my yard. Could I use a plow like that to bust it up, then use the boxblade and loader to relocate the soil?

 

[rickmacheske]

I'm not sure I should have done this but on my L3400 I removed the stop on the lever to raise the 3PH. The basic problem I was having is that I couldn't lift a post hole digger high enough. After some testing I determined that the lever did nothing from 0 to 3 to raise the 3PH. When I removed the stop the raise increased significantly (~14 inches for the post hole digger). Just a thought....

Unfortunately, no one has been able to tell me how to adjust this including my dealer.

 

[Knight9]

Familyman,

I'm not sure how well it will work for the trenching/plowing of "virgin" soil. I'll be trying it out shortly. I'm hoping that as long as the soil is not to hard it will dig in and give me a nice furrow. If it does, there's no reason why you wouldn't be able to make a furrow, offset a little, make another and then use your loader to move the loose dirt. I don't have a toothbar on my FEL, so I'm hoping to do exactly that.

I'll be taking pictures as I do this work, so I'll try to post some in the projects area once I get at it.

 

[Knight9]

I'm not sure I should have done this but on my L3400 I removed the stop on the lever to raise the 3PH.

My position control knob on the 3PH lever is "below" the lever on the down end of the slot. Thus, when I pull the lever back, it's as high as it gets. This is only a problem for two implements. Originally, my KK rough cut mower...so I drilled new holes on it and added another set of lift pins, and now my middlebuster. Other than those, it hasn't been an issue.

I'm presuming your position control knob was on the "lift" end of the slot??