plowing up my garden

[schmism]

Wow! Not sure how you're going to get all that in 900sf.

i hear ya, i was also trying to get an idea of how much space i would need.

ive got an almost unlimted area i can extend it to. the first would include an addtional 15' farther south (the pic with the tractor in it is looking NNW)

ya the disk seems like the way to go

as my carrots love tomatos book says.... the asparagus likes tomato's (and vise versa) so im thinking ill use the existing rows of sparce asparagus that i started with in that area (from the previous owners) and mix my tomato's in hear and there.

The book also mentions dont plant xzy "near" abc..... but i have yet to figure out what "near" means.... other end of the garden? 2 rows over? If i understand right it has to do with cross polination but in such a small space, seems silly to think a honey bee would vist one flower and not the next one 2 rows over....

 

[wushaw]

I started a small garden this year also.
A disk works....but a tiller is the cats meow to making a fluffy seedbed for the roots to grow easier. I recently bought a tiller and planted some seed in the tilled stuff and it seems to like it better than what I planted in the disked stuff with the clumps.

Don't plant tall stuff that will shade your short stuff, plot everything out on a piece of paper, keep a journal of planting and harvesting times, use of a calendar is helpfull.
I am reading and learning as I go. I am having a ball with it

 

[charlz]

Tiller is handy. I set up my big garden with raised beds this year. I have a 50" tiller which covers my tracks, I can drive right down my raised beds and till as I go. I am going to plant grass in between the raised beds for keeping the weeds down and providing nice walkways. Hopefully this all works as planned My only concern is if the tiller is going to end up throwing dirt in ever-wider raised beds.

The other day I ran across a link to this old post in another thread:

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachments/56139-tiller-mod.html

That setup is just perfect for gardening and I will probably do it at some point for my other 'flat' gardens where I plant corn etc.

 

[flusher]

so im puting in a new garden this spring. (perhaps im late but with the other irons ive had in the fire, by my persective, im doing good )

i had picked up a 2 bottom plow some months ago and at that time decided to make a mess of the yard in an area that would become the garden. (it was a fuz wet at the time)

Well im a city boy, dont know chit about plows, and i know i dont have the right draw bar for it so needless to say it isnt set up right, but will turn dirt.

in my virgin sod yard, my TC will NOT pull a double 14".

after tweeking some stuff i figured out i could set things so that really only one plow makes contact and in my never-plowed ground that was the limit of the HST.

so now (as of last night) i have a 60x15' chuck of black dirt showing

the wife thinks there needs to be more, i think its going to be plenty for the first year!

so this is a 2 part thread.

1) feel free to bash the piss poor plowing job
2) i need advise on how to lay out the garden (rows size, spaceing etc )
3) what happens now. I have in my head to get a KK tiller, just dont know if ill get it before i need it for this season... .so now what?

I used my 21-hp Kubota B7510HST and a middle buster ($140 from Tractor Supply) to plow my garden. Then used my Yanmar RS-1200 rototiller ($300 from my local grey market tractor guy) to bust up the clods and level the seed bed. Plowing before tilling makes it easy on the RS-1200.

You don't need to spend big bucks on implements for a veg garden if you shop around.

 

[Slamfire]

The last 3 or 4 furrows look pretty darned good. With what you want to plant you'll need to do that again, once or twice. I like to plow in the fall, then I can cover it with manure, and let it rot over the winter. In the spring the darker ground warms up faster than vegetation, and dries out quicker. I prefer a disk for harrowing, although one of the chain link types ought to work as well, they are just more expensive. To mark out rows, I put a couple of shovels on my cultivator, appropriately spaced, that lets me do two at once.

 

[WayneB]

Looks good to me! You might consider doubling the size and then put a cover crop in half of it. I would think it you used buckwheat you could get two crops of it this year. It will improve the soil plus cut down on the number of weeds. Then next year you can switch the areas and put cover crop on the other part of the garden.

Just a thought!

 

[RalphVa]

Probably the most useful tools to finish this up would be a cultivator and something like the keulavator from Agri Supply to make raised rows.

Attached is a picture of my rig that'll do both together (in your case, you need the cultivator only first, to tear up the clods and even out the mounds). It's an old JD M soil ripper rig adapted to 3 pt with disc hillers added in place of some of the cultivator plows in the one shot, soil ripper only in the other shot.

Ralph

 

[schmism]

The last 3 or 4 furrows look pretty darned good.

ya the stuff farther toward the hay feild/pasture was previously done much earlyer in the year (just after i brought my plow home)

It took a good 3 or 4 passes to find a setup that produced results like i had seen in pics (even though my setup is totally unorthodox)

im thinking ill head up to TSC tonight and see what they have for a disk.

Usually (up till now) ive been a wait it out till i find a nice used bargon priced attachment that i need.

dont think i have that luxury this time as i dont think i can come up with anyone that would have another CUT mounted disk that could help me out in my "neighborhood" (ive got a farmer neighbor or 2 that could bring there 28' disk over on the back of there 250 hp monster )

 

[rickmacheske]

Though most may disagree I like using a tiller for my garden. My rows are easy. I drive the tractor over tilled ground to make the aisles. Everything else is rows. For some items I have two rows of seeds planted on the mounds that I have left between the aisles.

 

[mikim]

I know squat about gardening ... but my wife will want one just as soon as we move to our country place. At this juncture I think I'd tell my wife "Ok that's done, now grab a rake, it's your turn" and a few days later when the swelling went down and I could see again - I'd give her a hand. OR take this chance to buy more implements aka tiller, disk, etc.....