by Wesley Adams

Back in the time before the invention of tractors, growing a crop was seriously hard work. Tremendous amounts of laborers and farm animals were needed to maintain a field or garden. Fast forward to today! Farm implements combined with a tractors 3 point hitch will allow you to produce the same results while cutting the cost of manpower. In the age of the Internet, you can research, watch demos, and even order these attachments directly online and have them delivered without getting out of your chair.

Tractors provide two different ways to attach farm implements and are standard features on most compact and full sized tractors. The 3 point hitch system allows a garden farmer to connect a seemingly endless array of tractor equipment to the rear of a garden tractor. Many of these will also need to be powered by what is known as the Power Take Off or PTO, and a good example of garden tractor attachments that would need to be powered by the tractor is a tractor rotary tiller and if you were putting up a fence around your garden, a post hole digger.

Front End Loaders on a Tractor with a quick attach hitch provides the smart farmer a way to connect not only a bucket, but also a variety of other useful farm tractor implements as well. If your tractor has auxiliary hydraulics available, you will also be able to use a tractor grapple bucket, tractor pallet forks, and pole handlers just to name a few.

When you have chosen the spot for your garden, the first implement you will use on your tractor is a plow. People have been plowing their fields since before the time of Julius Caesar. Farmers in that time used oxen and mules to pull their plows. Now we have tractors to do this hard work instead of livestock, and aren’t we all glad? Traditional plows today are called turning plows because they simply turn the soil over on the moldboard. These farm implements have advanced tremendously in their design in the past 100 years.

The second step to planting a great garden is simple. You need to bust up the large chunks of dirt known to farmers everywhere as “Clods”. There are two different farm tractor attachments that are made to accomplish this task. The first is a Disc Harrow, and these are non-PTO powered farm tractor implements. They come in many sizes to accomodate the needs for compact tractor implements as well as very large versions to suit the large farm tractors as well. Basically these run over the clods and bust them into smaller ones. After several passes with a disc harrow, the soil will reach a good consistency for planting your crops in.

Considering the tremendous amount of time that can be saved, many gardeners prefer to use a PTO driven tiller instead of a disc harrow. Yes, the rotary tillers do cost more up front, but this is easily justified if you have a large garden that you can prepare for planting your crops in one pass instead of two or more depending on how fine you like your soil to be. One more thing to consider when buying a tiller is whether or not your tractor has the horsepower to pull a tiller the full width of your tractor. If not, look for a tiller that has a clevis hitch so that you can offset the tiller to clear out one side of your tire tracks to keep from ending up with a hard spot in your garden.

Your soil has now been plowed, tilled or broken up with a disc, and is now ready for a garden bedder. Also known as a garden hiller, this attachment will mound up the soil for planting and basically creates a raised bed for your seed to lay in. Some of the larger field bedders will have a sweep option on the outside of the bedder wheels to pull up the hard spots that are left from your tractors tires in your garden. A garden bedder should be fully adjustable to create wide or narrow beds depending on what you are planting.

Now comes the not so fun part of a garden . . . taking care of the weeds that can strangle your crop. You basically have two choices in this area, hoe your garden (don’t recommend it if you have a large garden and enjoy standing upright) or you can attach a garden cultivator to your tractor. While your garden plants are young and still fighting against any unwanted competitors for sunlight, water, and minerals you will want to get rid of the competition. The premise is to stradle your plants with your tractor, and the cultivator will pull up the weeds growing in your garden. Be careful not to get your cultivator shanks too close to your crop so you do not disturb the roots, but get close enough to pull out your weeds. Once your crop is big enough to shade the area on either side of your row, you are pretty much in the clear.

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About the Author:
Before you drive down to your local Farm Implements store, if you are looking for American Made Attachments for your tractor . . . try the Everything Attachments website