Choosing And Using A Tractor

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When examining used harrows, check all the discs for damage, and also make sure that each gang turns freely—but without excessive play in the bearings. Very large harrows are often equipped with ball or roller bearings, but the ones you'll be looking at will probablv turn on cast-iron sleeve bearings or simple hardwood bushings. (Both are acceptable, although the iron bearings will last longer.) In any case, each bearing—unless it is sealed—should be equipped with its own grease fitting. A serviceable used disc harrow will probably cost you between $150 and $250 ($600 and $1,200 new).

Spike-tooth harrows, sometimes called smoothing harrows, are used after disc harrows when an even finer seedbed is required (Fig. 5). They're ordinarily connected directly to the frame of the disc harrows and drawn across the field behind them, thereby eliminating the need for an extra soil-compacting trip over the field. Because spike-tooth harrows are not linked to the three-point hitch, the depth of their bite is not regulated by the tractor's hydraulic draft control, but by a ratcheting lever on the harrows themselves. If you decide that you need a set, you shouldn't have to pay more than $100 for a used one ($300 to $400 new).

A cruder, but absolutely free, smoothing harrow can be improvised by dragging a set or two of discarded steel-framed bedsprings-which you can probably find at the dumpbehind the disc harrows (Fig. 6).

Rotary tillers hook up to your tractor's three-point linkage and are powered by its PTO shaft. Like walk-behind tillers, they pulverize the soil and leave it ready for planting in a single pass-in effect combining the operations of plow, disc harrows, and smoothing harrows. Various sizes are available, but a medium-sized tractor shouldn't be expected to handle one any wider than four feet-and if you plan on chewing up any sod ground, a three-footer is a better choice. Since the space between your tractor's rear wheels is likely to be greater than that, look for a tiller that can be mounted in an offset position (Fig. 7), to prevent the tractor tires from leaving tracks in the freshly tilled ground at each pass over the field.

Rotary tillers are expensive—$600 to $750 used, and double that when new—and the tractormounted units are not as versatile as walk-behind tillers. Come midsummer, for example, you'll have a hard time maneuvering a tractor into the middle of the garden to prepare a few small beds for second plantings of broccoli-a task that's easily handled with a walkbehind type. Still, if you plant a very large garden or plan to do any commercial gardening, the tractor-mounted tiller may be a worthwhile investment. The same quarter-acre piece that would take all day to work up with a walk-behind tiller can be disposed of in an hour with a tractor-powered one. A rotary tiller is also a potential money-maker in the spring, when you may be able to find work preparing home gardens in your area.

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