Earth Comb for Tractor (?)

Tall T

Well-known Member
The is my favorite garden tool. It's great for picking up a huge whack of blackberry canes and small bushes, just by stabbing it into the pile and then flipping it upside down to carry it to a burn pile or whatever.

I don't even know what it was originally but I'm guessing a hay rake.

But another great use for it is after i have tilled and made my seed beds, I comb them repeatedly before planting and it keeps bringing up couchgrass root bits and root balls and other things that you don't want sprouting later. So it saves a lot of weeding later which usually disturbs vegetable seedlings.

My tractor question. . .
It seems to me I've seen a kind of cultivator that combs the soil as well, with tynes and coil springs. Is there such an animal and what is it called?

Thanks,
T
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I like using steel tubing for handles and I put a hardwood grip at the other end.
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Clam rake, or any other thing you want to use it for. I got a drag type spring toothed harrow that works good.
 
you are right they are great tools,
I have three of them, small, medium and large like the one in your picture, all three have a use from time to time.

I also have the rock rake for the little tractor, use it to drag grape vine cutting or drag the driveway, whatever, it works good,
a man can not have too many tools,
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That is a tool used for raking ear corn out of a crib when you first open it up. When farmers used to pick and store their corn by the ear, they
would have a corn sheller come and shell out the crib. You used that tool to rake the corn into the sheller drag.
 
At our plant, in the metal stamping department, they used those type tools to drag scrap out of the large punch presses,
 

I mulch so don't need those tools... I can not say its any less work other than once I have the grass clippings and leaves applied I am done with it. I am also putting organic matter back into the soil,,, Good are bad I have it available and use it...

My unlimited supply of grass clip'ns died with my uncle he vacuumed as he mowed 4 acres of flush lawn.
 
Just about every ditch rider around here carries one in the pickup to clean tumbleweed and brush logjams from in front of culverts. Works great.
 
Great bunch of replies about the tool.
Got a laugh out of the one about its use for poking holes in potatoes.

Here's another fork that I haven't put a handle on. The reason I'm posting a picture of it is cause someone told me that THIS one was a potato fork.

Is that so?

Thanks,
Terry

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Would make a good tractor grille as well. :)
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That's a silage fork. You would never turn over soil
to uncover potatoes with the width of it and those
thin tines. An ensilage fork had a short handle with
a loop handle on the end - like a sharpshooter
shovel. You were using them in tight quarters like
the house at the bottom of the silo (we used a
trench by the time I wielded one) so you wanted a
shorter handle.
 
(quoted from post at 20:15:17 05/05/16) That's a silage fork. You would never turn over soil
to uncover potatoes with the width of it and those
thin tines. An ensilage fork had a short handle with
a loop handle on the end - like a sharpshooter
shovel. You were using them in tight quarters like
the house at the bottom of the silo (we used a
trench by the time I wielded one) so you wanted a
shorter handle.

Those were my thoughts exactly when someone said it was a potato fork. It didn't make sense, too wide, tines too close together, too heavy a load.

You working in the silo . . .
When I was in my teens I couldn't go even close to barns or hay or horses without getting asthma so bad I'd need oxygen.
By age 25 I was good to go.

Thanks,
T
 
I used a tool just like that yesterday to find a PVC check pipe in my septic system's drain field. Try as I might, I can't seem to keep track of the pipes (which are there to open up for diagnosing flow in the drain field). About once every couple of years, the pipes, which are at ground level to allow mowing, kind of disappear under grass clippings, leaves, etc. I know their general location, so if I can't easily pinpoint them, I pull the long-toothed fork across the area and can almost instantly hear/feel it hit the pipe. I used to use one to pull ear corn out of a crib when shelling, but that was in a different lifetime.
 
I said a "potato hook", a very common tool to this day. Not used so much for digging potatoes but for separating vines and debris from the already dug spuds, also we grouped spuds on top to make picking easier. Oh yes, better not punch holes in them or you had best eat the evidence or quickly feed the punctured spud to the horses. Initially we dug them by hand with a garden spade fork, later with a one row horse drawn digger.
 
I owned a hardware store for many years. The 'hooked' fork is called a 'corn rake' and was used primarily to pull ear corn out of a crib or
wagon. The bigger fork shown in front of the tractor is a 'cob fork' which was used to scoop up corn cobs. The corn rake came with a long
handle. The cob fork always had a short D handle.
 
Ross,

Talk about a multiple use tool eh! (how can you tell I'm Canadian)

A pipe and obstacle finder. Yesterday while prepping to plow I saw that I'd be over-running into grasses and tall thistles etc., so I used the "Potato Hook" to mine for obstacles. Sho 'nuff, two 10" tall skinny stumps and a round of concrete the size of a gallon+ can. :)

cheerz,
T
 
Gaspump,

You wrote:
[color=darkblue:5545b8a7a4]I said a "potato hook", a very common tool to this day. Not used so much for digging potatoes but for separating vines and debris from the already dug spuds, also we grouped spuds on top to make picking easier. Oh yes, better not punch holes in them or you had best eat the evidence or quickly feed the punctured spud to the horses. Initially we dug them by hand with a garden spade fork, later with a one row horse drawn digger.[/color:5545b8a7a4]

Very interesting!
"Potato Hook" It is written!
I was wondering about what you've cleared up. If the soil all around the potatoes is all settled, hard and heavy it would be a bit much to use the hook to be uprooting them although the tyne strength surprises me. I had always thought that that those flat pronged forks were the inititial diggers like you say.

I often took a carrot on my walk to the main road for a big black percheron. I'd pretend I wasn't paying attention and he'd bite my hat. I didn't know they liked potatoes! :)

T
 
Hi Oakdale,

You wrote:
[color=darkblue:e37bb034e8]I owned a hardware store for many years. The 'hooked' fork is called a 'corn rake' and was used primarily to pull ear corn out of a crib or wagon. The bigger fork shown in front of the tractor is a 'cob fork' which was used to scoop up corn cobs. The corn rake came with a long handle. The cob fork always had a short D handle.[/color:e37bb034e8]

The wealth of experience on this forum blows me away!
A CORN RAKE! How about that!

And my wider fork is a COB FORK for picking the cobs up. Amazing.

I take it that my Cob Fork is an ancient tool then
and that it also doubled as an Ensilage Fork. (?)
I'm wondering if it had a long handle for silage and a short D-handle for corn.
I was wondering about the original handles!
Makes sense that the wide Cob Fork would have a short handle and a D to stabilize the heavier load it can pick up.

Thanks much,
Terry
 

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