How to carry fertilizer for the spreader?

[rox]

All right, this is probably a dumb question, but here goes. On our 12 acre olive farm we have to give the trees cow manure twice a year. We have a tractor and we have a spreader that attaches to the back fo the tractor, must be a PTO one because that is all this farm has is PTO equipment. The spreader is pretty big, say it would hold one big bag of manure, and the manuer bags are big and heavy, probably I don't know 50 to 100lbs (?).

My husband does not use the spreader becasue he says it would take to much time driving back and forth the the supply pile after spreading just one bag. Our farm is 12 acres and a lot of it is on stone terraces built up huge hillsides. With the terraces he has to do a lot of zigging and zagging and take round about ways of getting to different fields. In other words it is not just flat fields where you have tractor paths you follow. So I see his point about having to go back to the supply pile for a bag at a time to fill up the spreader. How do you do spread manure? We must be missing something here. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif The only wagon we have is one that hooks up to the back of the tractor on the 3PH. He jsut lowers that little wagon down to the ground opens up 3 or 4 bags of manure, and dumps it in the wagon. Then he drives to his fields, gets off the tractor and uses a dustpan to put the fertializer in a pretty big bucket, carries the bucket down the rows and throws out the manure along the drip irrigation lines.

There must be a better way of doing this. Last year I sat in the back of the wagon and threw out the fertilizer with a metal dust pan but this year I am working on prunning the almond trees so I didnt' help him. There msut be a better way of doing this that we have not thought of. Also is there a better sectin of the message board that I should have posted this in? I apologize if I put this in the wrong spot.

 

[rdsaustintx]

Waitin for Junkman to weigh-in on this one.

He spreads lots of manure 'round here. /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

 

[bczoom]

Rox,

Can you post a picture or link or something to show us the spreader you're using?

For getting the fertilizer near the fields, can you load several bags in the wagon (keep the bags sealed) and drive out to the fields and set the bags in the general areas of where you'll need them? When the spreader is empty, just grab another bag off the ground, slit the bag and dump directly into the spreader?

Brian

 

[toy1]

Look at turfco they make a product called a cr10 you can buy it with a side discharge conveyor. I use it to mulch rows of blueberries bushes 1000 feet long. It is pricy but it is an excellent piece of equipment, also some of the manure spreaders have side discharge.

 

[rox]

Many thanks everybody!
The idea to look at Turfco was MOST excellent. From there I learned all about Top Dressing, which I had never heard of before. From there I Googled Top Dressing and was taken to all kinds of informative websites. Probably we will end up with a tow behind "something". This website was very informative and I learned a lot.
http://www.athleticturf.net/athleticturf/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=157155

I am sure I can get something around here but at least now I kow what to look for. I will take a photo tomorrow of the spreader we have. It really is not very practical at all. I like the tow behind spreaders, and really we don't need all that big of one, jsut more or less medium sized.

It is like a maze going up and down the terraces to get from one set of terraces to the others, on some we have to go through a back field across the neighbors property, down a small road a pice and then turn into our top most terrace. So moving the bags to the various fields would be rather time consuming. I think the tow behinds would be great. I don't think for the fertilizer it has to be all that precise. I think a mechanical operation that works by the turning wheels fo the spreader pulling a chain is good enough. The only thing is, it would be nice to get a trailor one that is off set. With the trees it is more convenient for my husband to drive with off set equipment so he doesn't get bashed by the low branches.

Not ready to buy quite yet, still have to sell more olive oil, but I do lurk quite a bit to learn so that, well just becasue I like the stuff and I like to learn.

I ahve been checking out the Kiota forums quite a bit and learning about those tractors. You know if we got a tractor with a loader on the front my husband could carry quite a few extra bags in that loader to re-fill the spreader as he went along. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[JoeR]

Without seeing a picture, have you considered staging the bags of manure before spreading them? Similar to a re-supply point. Let me give an example. Let's say you can go 1,000 feet with 100 pounds of manure. You could then put 100 pound bags every 1,000 feet. This way you would travel 1,000 feet while spreading, then get off the tractor and load the bags you have already placed at the 1,000 foot intervals and continue on spreading.

Good luck,

Joe