Potato Plow

JimAnderson · Jul 27, 2013

wag220 said:
I don't have pictures of my homemade one, but looks almost identical to first photo . Trust me it works great!! brings the potatoes up to the top as slick as can be. made mine with scraps laying around and the tines were old electric fence posts. easy build. I should mention my tines were welded to a cultivator tip and angled slightly downward so it digs in. like I said it works great , I'll never hand dig again.

The tined potato plows pictured work great.I made one for my David Bradley using a 10" cultivator sweep and 1/4" bar stock welded to the vertical
shank swept back and angled up.I had used a middle buster the previous harvest and it it beat hand digging but the spuds rolled back into the
furrow.The tines help with this problem.The nice thing is that even if you don't get all the potatoes the first pass then the tractor doesn't care how many times you plow the row and I have less skewered potatoes than hand digging.Luck,JimAnderson

Dieselrider · Apr 23, 2014

JimAnderson said:
The tined potato plows pictured work great.I made one for my David Bradley using a 10" cultivator sweep and 1/4" bar stock welded to the vertical
shank swept back and angled up.I had used a middle buster the previous harvest and it it beat hand digging but the spuds rolled back into the
furrow.The tines help with this problem.The nice thing is that even if you don't get all the potatoes the first pass then the tractor doesn't care how many times you plow the row and I have less skewered potatoes than hand digging.Luck,JimAnderson

I hope this gets bumped up. I know this thread is old but, I am searching for answers now rather than waiting untill I need to dig potatoes in the fall. Does adding the tines to the back of a middlebuster type plow really help bring the potatoes up to the surface?

I have dug potatoes with a middle buster (without the tines) before and it beats digging by hand but, I always had to make several passes and stop between each one to pick up the spuds or they would get burried again on the next pass. With 800 to 1000 foot of potatoes that gets old. I can't afford a new digger so, if adding the tines can help, I am sure I can modify what I have. Thanks for this site and any advice available.

R W · Apr 23, 2014

Google Potato Digger, there are several diggers on their that wouldn't be to hard to copy.
Also look at homemade potato digger on google.

JimAnderson · Apr 24, 2014

Dieselrider said:
I hope this gets bumped up. I know this thread is old but, I am searching for answers now rather than waiting untill I need to dig potatoes in the fall. Does adding the tines to the back of a middlebuster type plow really help bring the potatoes up to the surface?

I have dug potatoes with a middle buster (without the tines) before and it beats digging by hand but, I always had to make several passes and stop between each one to pick up the spuds or they would get burried again on the next pass. With 800 to 1000 foot of potatoes that gets old. I can't afford a new digger so, if adding the tines can help, I am sure I can modify what I have. Thanks for this site and any advice available.

The tines definitely help lift the potatoes out of the furrow.In my case the David Bradley has been modified to move much slower than it was designed to.I suspect that a higher forward speed would flip the spuds futher away from the furrow.I would add them to the middle buster.The time and money
spent on this mod will be minimal and if you aren't happy with the change you can remove them with little effort.Luck,JimAnderson.