What is this attachment?

[SCDolphin]

What is this for and who made it?? I was told it level ground but never seen before

 

[MrJimi]

Hmm, thats a good one, I would say that it may? disturb the ground but I don't understand the different lengths of pipes facing rear. It is very adjustable and it has little ( looks like fan blades ) to break up soil and rakes to smooth it out afterwards. and the person that made that has lots of pipe fittings on it like maybe a sprinkler installer, very ingenious
I'm looking forward to all the other replies

 

[WarrenF]

Out here in potato country....they use that machine to hill up the potatoes the last time before they put the solid set sprinkler lines in the field. At least they used to use that machine. It will fluff up and hill up the soil around and over the emerging plant....the shovels will keep the furrow clean in case they are watering in the furrow.....at least that is what it looks like from the picture.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

"Rolling" cultivator. Looks like Lilliston (brand). Very common in some parts of the country, especially out west. Commonly used in irrigated farming. They break surface crust and eliminate weeds without digging too deep in soils kept wet by irrigation systems. (Pictured unit is smaller/older model than what is currently manufactured and shown in following link)

Bigham Brothers Lilliston Rolling Cultivators (Spider Gang Cultivators)

Reason for pipe "extentions" was to allow more row units/sweeps to be installed when used with wider rows. Those are common to a lot of rowcrop cultivators. I had a John Deere "RG" (rolling gaurd) cultivator for years that had the pipes extending back like that. I used "C-shank" style semi-rigid w/"sweeps" in place of those rotary row units.

 

[diyDave]

Its an older cultivator that someone has adapted for a purpose. The white parts are some sort of rolling basket cultivator, I have seen them in a catalog, somewhere, maybe Agri-Supply.com.

 

[jmarotz]

Farmwithjunk and Warren are both correct, it is a Lilliston row crop cultivator, around here it is mostly used for cultivating potatoes.

 

[Baby Grand]

Looks like someting outta a 50's sci-fi movie: The driver of a truck full of Garden Weasels gets lost and runs out of gas after straying onto the Nevada Test Site. As night falls, a radioactive dust cloud settles on the truck. The next morning the truck and driver are mysteriously shredded and turned under, the Garden Weasels are gone, and there's a weird, 7 foot wide track that looks like light tillage leaving the scene.

 

[WarrenF]

Farmwithjunk and Warren are both correct, it is a Lilliston row crop cultivator, around here it is mostly used for cultivating potatoes.

You know I am relieved. I thought about my answer while out on the road, and wondered if I had looked at the picture and was a bit bleery eyed. My post was around 2:30 a.m. cause I could not sleep. I will also add that I have seen a couple of farmers use them on corn ground....but at very high speed and not set too close.

By the way jamrotz....I did most of my growing up out on Karcher Rd about three miles west of the Karcher Mall. It of course was not in existence at the time of my growing up.

 

[jmarotz]

Warren I grew up raising seed potatoes in eastern Idaho.
We also called the Lilliston a rolling blight cultivator, as one slip of the steering or not holding up high enough on a side hill and some or all of your potatoes would be on top of the ground.

 

[WarrenF]

Warren I grew up raising seed potatoes in eastern Idaho.
We also called the Lilliston a rolling blight cultivator, as one slip of the steering or not holding up high enough on a side hill and some or all of your potatoes would be on top of the ground.

Now that one made me laugh AND remember......Growing up my Daddy always believed that idle hands were the devils workshop. Consequently, WE, us kids had to work. We bucked hay, topped corn, hoed sugar beets, and anything else my Father could find for us to do. WWEELL one summer, I got a job driving tractor....now you know I was in hog heaven...no more hard manual labor. Well I got to cultivate sugar beets in 100 weather with no umbrella or canopy.

A couple of times, I nodded off briefly and several beets suffered from that dread disease of cultivator blight.

 

[radman1]

We used to own a 6 row version of that attachment. As mentioned earlier, it is called a rolling cultivator. We used it on row crops such as corn, milo, soybeans etc. The tines rotate and are placed at an angle to tear up weeds. The extended arm to the back has a cultivator shank to also help remove weeds. Ours also had shields (an option) placed next to the rolling tines to prevent dirt from being thrown on the new, small growing crop. The smaller shank in the back could also be replaced with a wide shank to dig a ditch for gated (gravity) irrigation. They are easy to pull with a tractor. They worked well if the weeds were relatively small and the ground not too hard.

 

[diyDave]

I was right, Agrisupply.com has the rolling cultivator assemblies, I just got their March circular, and they sell 14" gang assemblies for $84.49, and all associated parts for them, on page 22 of the circular.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

I was right, Agrisupply.com has the rolling cultivator assemblies, I just got their March circular, and they sell 14" gang assemblies for $84.49, and all associated parts for them, on page 22 of the circular.

Although $85 ain't chicken feed, the assemblies Argi-Supply has are cheap generic knock-offs of the Lilliston "spider wheels".