middle buster

tomturkey

Well-known Member
I was at the local farm store yesterday and saw they had a bunch of middle busters out with the other equipment. My question is, What is their intended purpose? If it is to break up compaction, are you not compacting it even more with all the trips over the field? School me on this. gobble
 
If I'm not mistaken, those are Cat 0 or Cat 1? I think that's what they are. I just always assumed that they were in essence a sort of chisel plow for compact or subcompact tractors. Something used for gardening to breakup unplowed ground. That's what I think they're for.

Mark
 
I have one that I have made a water line ditch, dug a row of turnips with and ditched a few wet areas with, used it about 10 times in 20 years
 
I use mine to ditch with,lay off deep rows in the garden to set out tomato and pepper plants,plow out potatoes.I also have one with a chisel plow tooth on it to rip out roots when I don't want to go as deep as the subsoiler will go.
 
I origionally got mine to open a furrow in a sod field for the planting of pine tree seedlings. Gets the seedlings out of competition with sod, deeper in the soil closer to moisture. Also use for planting potatoes in garden. Have used it for trenching for underground wires and water lines. Not a must have tool but handy to have. I really should have put a coulter in front of the shovel to cut sod. Also have attached a chisel plow chisel in place of shovel for narrow grooves.
 
I dug a trench about 300 feet to run water out to the barn. Had to make about 4 passes, but it worked pretty good.
 
Tom different parts people do differently here we use them a lot instead of a turning plow , primary tillage , they open the ground and turn grass under , some of the tricycle tractors had one in the rear and one on both sides in front of the rear tires .
 
When I posted above, I hope that you and others don't think I was taking a shot at anyone. Just seems to me having seen middle busters on sales lots is that they are sort of a chisel for smaller tractors that can't pull bigger chisels. Totally understandable. Folks work best with what they have to work with. As you and others here have pointed out they're good for potatoes, burying wiring, well pipe and I would even imagine maybe irrigation drain tubing. I grew up poor, and we always did with our money what we could afford, and I pretty much got it figured that others do as well.

Mark
 
My comment was a reply to 504. I'm sure no yuppy and I hand dug potatos for years with a garden fork till I could afford the middle buster. I dug potatoes with a shovel before I got a garden fork. I like the middle buster the best.
 
Real common down here around Houston TX. Our gumbo clay will not tolerate a moldboard plow. The middle buster is used to build rows. Crops are planted on top of the "hill" to "keep their feet dry". If they would try to plant flat like up in Iowa the crops would drown under too much standing water. The hilled up rows divert all the extra water to the drainage ditches. No tiling here.

Pictures are some middle buster bottoms that I pulled off of Farmall Super C skip row middle buster. Gauge wheels are to control depth of furrow/height of hill.
a190671.jpg
 
(quoted from post at 23:32:08 04/27/15) When I posted above, I hope that you and others don't think I was taking a shot at anyone. Just seems to me having seen middle busters on sales lots is that they are sort of a chisel for smaller tractors that can't pull bigger chisels. Totally understandable. Folks work best with what they have to work with. As you and others here have pointed out they're good for potatoes, burying wiring, well pipe and I would even imagine maybe irrigation drain tubing. I grew up poor, and we always did with our money what we could afford, and I pretty much got it figured that others do as well.

Mark

Well said Mark, (I grew up poor, and we always did with our money what we could afford, and I pretty much got it figured that others do as well.)
 
Dean,

I have heard the term middle buster many times - I think it means something different to different people...confusing. So, a middle buster has two plows placed side by side. The dirt is piled up between the two plows leaving a furrow on either side of the piled up dirt. Is that correct?

Now for the confusing part; some people talk about digging potatoes with a middle buster....how does that work? You would be covering them up instead of digging them up....?

Thanks in advance, Ken
 
A middle buster is the V shaped bottom that used as a single unit for digging the root crops you run it right down the center of the roe and when it rolls the dirt out it will also roll out the potatoes, some will get covered with dirt as they come out. An easy way to find them is after you have picked up all you can find and also picked up all the vines is take a spring tooth harrow and go over the patch as if working ground, you will roll up a lot more that way and repeat. For ridging with one unit you would make one pass and then turn around and come back so it would pile soil up against the pass you just made.
 
(quoted from post at 10:14:04 05/05/15) A middle buster is the V shaped bottom that used as a single unit for digging the root crops you run it right down the center of the roe and when it rolls the dirt out it will also roll out the potatoes, some will get covered with dirt as they come out. An easy way to find them is after you have picked up all you can find and also picked up all the vines is take a spring tooth harrow and go over the patch as if working ground, you will roll up a lot more that way and repeat. For ridging with one unit you would make one pass and then turn around and come back so it would pile soil up against the pass you just made.
general response to all..........most of the "uses" I see posted above such a ditching, burying lines, digging potatoes are 'uses' that people have improvised, not what the middle-buster was originally designed/used for. In the days of row cropping, there were 2, 3, 4 row middle busters used to run off old cotton ridges, plow out the middles & the like. History. For modern farming, they are really just scrap iron & suitable for whatever you may improvise.
 

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