Middlebusters - am I missing something?

[hdbikercouple]

just an FYI when working ground and turning sharply. always raise tillage tool just to coverr tractor tracks. it is a lot easier on the tillage tool and tractor .

 

[Bill Barrett]

just an FYI when working ground and turning sharply. always raise tillage tool just to coverr tractor tracks. it is a lot easier on the tillage tool and tractor .

Good point, must have fallen asleep last year, broke a couple of disc blades, they are old and brittle. I TIGed them back together so far so good.

 

[ChuckinNH]

neil -

Couple of things to consider when hilling.

First is when to hill, and that is best done at 8-12" in plant height. The buried stem will sprout tubers, and all tubers form between the buried seedpiece and the surface of the ground. If you let the plants get away from you like I did last year, it is a royal pain to hill in a tangle of vines.

Height of the hill is basically as broad and high as you can make it. On 36" row centers you will be grabbing dirt almost to the center of the row middle. With 10" plants you want them covered right to the tips if you can do it. Don't worry, they'll grow back out from under the dirt.

Hilling twice say 2 weeks apart works well if you have the time or spit for it. If you do this, you can hill first when they are say 6" and then hill again at 12" or so.

If you look at the linked photo I posted above you can see hills down the rows of dead vines. It was a poor job on my part and of course the hills settle over the summer so they aren't as dramatic as they are fresh.

The trick is to mechanize the hilling using disks or cultivators rather than a hoe. the big farmers up this way use Lilliston rolling cultivators which throw the dirt from row centers onto the hill and can do many rows at once. The old horsedrawn hillers used cultivator teeth to loosen ground for two opposing angled disks which scooped dirt to the hill. I'm working toward mechanizing, that hoeing just isn't as fun as it used to be.

I use a furrower that looks like a middlebuster behind my Troybuilt walk behind tiller to make the rows for my potatoes. I fertilize, then pull in a bit of dirt, and set the seed. I hill mine when they are up 6-8" or a bit more. I run the tiller between the rows to make the soil as loose as possible, and then pull it up on the plants from both sides as high as possible. Last year I used more compost than commercial fertilizer, but I still had a pretty good crop. I am just using up the last of them now. Have to plant a few more this year, and get a tractor involved in the action!

How do you guys control the depth of the middlebuster. I could control the depth of the one I tried on my BX with the top link to some extent, but it would just be my luck that the tip would run right through my mature potatoes!

 

[Eastinlet]

Chuck -

I control the pitch of the plow with the toplink so I get maximum lifting action. Could actually use a longer toplink in my case.

i control depth via the 3 point position control and have room to go deeper should I wish to. I try to get just below the seedpieces, or in other words about the depth of the original planting furrow.

Definitely does a nicer job with moist soil as opposed to wet, and works a lot better with dead vines than live ones. Less clogging and tangled mess.

 

[ChuckinNH]

Thanks for the response Eastinlet. It would take a little room to get the middlebuster down to depth before encountering the potatoes. I didn't have position control, and kind of fudged that by letting it go to depth, and "bumping" it up the same number of times each pass. I sure would like to try that! I don't mind hilling potatoes, but I'm starting to find digging them by hand a little tiring if I don't have much time.

 

[Neil L]

East and all others,
Thanks for the help I think I gety it now, just got to try it.
Best, Neil

 

[RobJ]

Wow I've learned a lot to. I'll have to feed mine more. The water is the only wildcard. I plant early sometimes because we get more rain. But the spuds are the only thing that survive the lack or water.

I also don't get all the vines yall mention. hmmm. Here is a pic from last year...a good rain year. The stuff was planted 3/11/2007, the picture was taken on 4/7/2007. The spuds are the near 2 rows. So I'm guessing it looks like hilling time?

The rest is corn, then peas. The very small corn in the upper part of row 3 and 4 was planted on 3/26/2007.

1st pic is 4/7 , second pic is the 3/26.

 

[Eastinlet]

RobJ -

Your potatoes look ok for 5 weeks, and that would be a great time to hill. They look a little light, maybe lack of N.

I have attached the only digital photo I have of plants/hills at about 7-8 weeks. The weedy rows in the foreground are the Red Norlands you have seen harvested. They are not hilled due to my busy schedule and carelessness, and they are weedy. In the upper left you can see clean and hilled rows of Superiors.

The vines are beginning to get into the row middles and will eventually completely cover them. The Norlands are worse in this regard than Superiors, which are more erect in form. Potato cultivars vary a lot in terms of growth habit and other physical features.

It really does pay to consider nutrient levels. I rely on soil analysis and recommend you have yours tested. A crude rule of thumb would be to give taters 30-50% more than you would corn, and they need quite a lot of phosphorous. My soils are very different than yours, but I am putting down 1500 pounds of 10-20-20 per acre.

You might try it as I do, i.e. trench-fertilizer-cover-plant seed-cover-hill. Not much to do about rain except plant early. Can you run soaker hose or irrigate? If you expect dry weather, you could space your seed further apart to reduce competition. That will help.

Potatoes are tough as nails, they can even grow just sitting on the ground. Problem is they won't make many tubers unless they have what they need. They are a cool season plant whose optimimum temperature is 70 degrees. The hills help control heat on the roots. They need an inch a week of rain as an ideal when the tubers are bulking. Tubers are mostly water, so you can see the need.

I don't know what you have for insects and disease, but they are a problem wherever potatoes are grown. Attached photios are of Colorado potato beetle adult and larvae which will reduce yield to the level of a joke in a short time by defoliating the plant. I have trouble with leafhoppers some years, for their tiny size they sure hurt the crop. I have to spray against early and late blight as well, the latter being what caused the Irish potato famine. It will ruin you.

This thread may die out eventually, so you guys with questions can PM me any time if I can help you any. Don't know how much I can help, but always willing to try.

 

[RobJ]

Hmmm, maybe our potatoes are different, just what we call red potatoes around here. But I've never seen a vine one on the ground like that. Water gets what the Lord provides. I tried to pump from a pond one year when we got no rain. Didn't do much. I have limed the place since it's real sandy. It use to be part of a wild pasture. Here is a pic of the first year. I think i turned over and replanted 50,000,000 goat weeds. It's getting better as I disk it about 4 times a year. I don't have the time to work it since its at the weekend place. Mainly just something to play with.

 

[Eastinlet]

hey, check out how these guys modified a middlebuster for digging potatoes:

http://www.farmingwithhorses.com/threepointattachments.html

Should work, especially in lighter or drier soil. Would be an easy job to modify a 16" middlebuster shovel. Cheap, too.