strantor
Platinum Member
Hiller, hipper, garden bedder, rower, row maker, bed shaper, row builder, seems there an infinite number of names for the thing that makes garden rows. Usually they have two cupped disks and you use them to turn flat tilled earth into raised rows for gardening. That's the thing I'm talking about.
I'm only home for the weekend, got a lot of plants in peat pots that badly need to go into the ground ASAP. Got my garden plot tilled but didn't have a row maker, and with a garden this size, doing it by hand with a hoe would have taken all weekend. Couldn't find a row maker anywhere local so I decided to build one. Couldn't find any cupped discs local either, so I went one level lower into simplicity. It was a bit of gamble as I couldn't find any examples close to what I wanted to do, for proof of concept. I put all my eggs in one basket, spending most of my Saturday designing and building (actually building only took a couple hrs but figuring out what I wanted and how to do took much longer) this thing that I wasn't even sure would work, and if it didn't, my garden would probably be ruined and have to start over. But it DID work, I'm happy to report. Providing the details here for inspiration.
Disclaimer: the cost/amount of steel used would probably be close to the cost of a commercial unit with discs. You won't likely save much money going this route unless you have lots of scrap steel strewn about (as I do). Also you can't build rows as fast with this as you can with the ones which have discs. You have to take your time, watch your row, make adjustments when it starts to build up or thin out.
The idea is a "V"-shaped "funnel" that takes 3ft wide and 6" deep worth of loose tilled earth and funnels it into a row 12" wide and 12"-18" high. It does just that. Because it doesn't have discs which roll into the earth and draw it up, I relied on weight to get it down into the ground. It is constructed of (2) 24"x48" plates 3/8" thick and (4) pieces of 4" I-beam 48" long. Total weight is 550-600lbs. It has a receiver hitch welded onto it so that it can be connected to the 3-point with a cheap trailer mover.
At first I had the entire overhung weight of the entire implement supported by the receiver hitch alone, and the receiver hitch broke on the first bump i hit on my way from the shop to the garden. I realize that i was asking a lot of the receiver hitch with all that extended load and that it wasn't designed to be used that way, but still, i expect more of a device that critical, rated for 6,000lbs. There was ZERO penetration of the weld into the thicker metal. I'm convinced that this could have happened just as easily out on the highway towing a heavy trailer and resulted in a bad wreck. So therefore I'm cautioning all about purchasing UltraTow hitches from Norther Tool. My welds aren't the prettiest, but none of mine broke. Just the factory weld on the hitch. After re-welding the hitch with several passes it should have been good to go, but I opted to help it out with a come-along just to be safe.
I'm only home for the weekend, got a lot of plants in peat pots that badly need to go into the ground ASAP. Got my garden plot tilled but didn't have a row maker, and with a garden this size, doing it by hand with a hoe would have taken all weekend. Couldn't find a row maker anywhere local so I decided to build one. Couldn't find any cupped discs local either, so I went one level lower into simplicity. It was a bit of gamble as I couldn't find any examples close to what I wanted to do, for proof of concept. I put all my eggs in one basket, spending most of my Saturday designing and building (actually building only took a couple hrs but figuring out what I wanted and how to do took much longer) this thing that I wasn't even sure would work, and if it didn't, my garden would probably be ruined and have to start over. But it DID work, I'm happy to report. Providing the details here for inspiration.
Disclaimer: the cost/amount of steel used would probably be close to the cost of a commercial unit with discs. You won't likely save much money going this route unless you have lots of scrap steel strewn about (as I do). Also you can't build rows as fast with this as you can with the ones which have discs. You have to take your time, watch your row, make adjustments when it starts to build up or thin out.
The idea is a "V"-shaped "funnel" that takes 3ft wide and 6" deep worth of loose tilled earth and funnels it into a row 12" wide and 12"-18" high. It does just that. Because it doesn't have discs which roll into the earth and draw it up, I relied on weight to get it down into the ground. It is constructed of (2) 24"x48" plates 3/8" thick and (4) pieces of 4" I-beam 48" long. Total weight is 550-600lbs. It has a receiver hitch welded onto it so that it can be connected to the 3-point with a cheap trailer mover.
At first I had the entire overhung weight of the entire implement supported by the receiver hitch alone, and the receiver hitch broke on the first bump i hit on my way from the shop to the garden. I realize that i was asking a lot of the receiver hitch with all that extended load and that it wasn't designed to be used that way, but still, i expect more of a device that critical, rated for 6,000lbs. There was ZERO penetration of the weld into the thicker metal. I'm convinced that this could have happened just as easily out on the highway towing a heavy trailer and resulted in a bad wreck. So therefore I'm cautioning all about purchasing UltraTow hitches from Norther Tool. My welds aren't the prettiest, but none of mine broke. Just the factory weld on the hitch. After re-welding the hitch with several passes it should have been good to go, but I opted to help it out with a come-along just to be safe.
