Need advice for putting in a garden with my tractor

bcraig2N

Member
I have a 1964 MF 35 with the Z134 engine that I bought for bush hogging and finish mowing.All I have Now is a Bush hog and a 6ft box blade with the rippers.

Now I am thinking I would like to have a garden to grow organic food for me and my family.I am going to start from seed.

What I would like to have is Tomatoes,Onions,Potatoes,Squash
Beets,Lettuce,Cucumber,Carrots,Okra and Peas

I want to disturb the ground as Little as possible and I am not going to use any chemicals.I am going to use about a 1/4 acre or so.

Can I use Just the Box blade with the rippers to just barely run the rippers into the ground to work the ground to plant the seeds or do I need to get a disc or get some other piece of equipment?

Any and all advice and Information of Planting times will really be appreciated.
 
Thanks but maybe I should have said disturb the ground as little as possible using the tractor.
I am disabled ,my wife is 68 and disabled and my Mother and Dad are 79 and 83.
I don't think putting in a 1/4 acre lasagna garden is something We are going to do.
I like piddling around with the tractor and bush hogging with it though and would like to put in a garden with a minimum amount of equipment.

Thanks
 
Guess it depends on your soil,in my area with red clay to get good growth, root development and water retention the ground needs to be ripped deep which also cuts the tree roots.
If you had a subsoiler and a disk harrow you could work up your garden pretty good.Both can be bought off Craigslist pretty cheap usually.
 
"Any and all advice and Information of Planting times will really be appreciated."

Get your ground prepped now, let the winter work on it. Not sure where you're located, here's when I plant our truck patch in SW MO. Potatoes, onions, beets, lettuce, carrots, and peas get planted in early/mid March. This is also when we plant green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and brussell sprouts. Tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and okra need warmer soil and air temps, but I still try to get them in early/mid May. Works some years, and we get early production from them. Other years I have to replant, and will still get a good crop. Of course, the local weather conditions/forecast will dictate more specific planting times.

Hope this helps. Mark
 
Sure you can work it up but then how will you plant the stuff or weed it.
Laying down some mulch isn't much different than all that.
Or perhaps you should look into raised beds.
Get a few installed and add more if you can handle the work.
 
We live in Central AL. We have a
couple old fords. We do a 1/4 acre
garden. Maybe Overkill but we use
a 2 bottom turning plow and then a
disk. Depending on soil moisture
we may have to do a little manual
rake job to smooth it. We also
grow a cover crop in winter ,oats
last year. Plow em under about a
month before we want to plant.
Email is open,if you want to chit
chat. We eat good. Kevin in
Central AL
 
If you're planning on doing things organically with essentially no tillage then weeds will be
your biggest challenge. About the only option available to you will be mulching and on a plot
this size that will require a lot of work and a large supply of suitable material. The 1/4 acre
garden you're thinking of is about the same size as my 100x100 plot and I know from experience
how much effort keeping ahead of the weeds can be, even with the tillage tools and cultivators I
use with my tractors. In addition, having a bunch of surface trash will complicate if not make
impossible the use of labor-saving devices such as hand-pushed cultivators and seeders.

Some of the crops you mentioned, specifically lettuce, carrots, and onions, typically require a
very clean seedbed due to slow germination and early growth, both of which can let weeds get a
foothold. Moldboard plows are still widely used for this reason in areas where crops like these
are grown commercially. Also, these tiny seeds require a finely tilled seedbed in order to
accurately plant them at the shallow depths they require.

Although it goes against your desires if it were me I'd be looking for a roto-tiller just wide
enough to cover your tractor's wheel width. This would permit the use of a hand-pushed seeder
(such as an Earthway) which reduces the labor of planting considerably. Add an old walk-behind
garden tractor (David Bradley, Simplicity, or the like) with a cultivator attachment and you'd be
all set.
 

I talked with A guy I know that has a lot of experience farming and he told me that I needed some type of very small 1 or 2 row Plow that would rip the hardpan but not cause much surface disturbance, with some type of no till coulter added.
He told me with less surface disturbance that would greatly cut down on my weed problem.

Thoughts on this ?
 
Notill farming doesn't work in my neighborhood because of the special combination of very cold winters, very heavy clayish soil, very heavy
snow melt, and very high ground water table. Good people have tried, notill is a no go here. So I'm a poor one to give notill advise.... ;)

In corn and soybean farming it can work. Only a very few are trying to do it organically, and they have a very special situation of the right soils,
climate, and so forth that it can work at all.

Garden crops are a much more tender set of crops, even harder to make this work.

Here a person would want a tiller, and work the ground up every spring and plant into it. The very first year the tiller would struggle to break up
sod or weedy junk growing, but after that it is a breeze to create a good seedbed for gardens.

If you wish to notill garden crops into a sod and raise thrm organically, you are out there where few have succeeded and will be creating new
ways of doing things for others to learn from.

Be careful of 'do it this way' or 'that way'. The practices you use will become very dependent on your local conditions - soil, climate, rainfall,
native grasses or whatever you are trying to plant into.

In general the garden crops you mention like a lot of water by their roots, don't like competition at all from other plants, and are pretty delicate
early in their growing cycle.

They will -not- like grasses growing between the rows sucking away the water and using up the N and other nutrients from the soil.

I'm not sure what your plan is to control growth between the rows?

As you suggest, notill and not disturbing the soil between your plants will greatly reduce the number of annual weed shoots!

But, now you have to deal with the perannual weeds, thistles, and so forth. And grasses.

Good luck with the project, you will need to figure out a system that works in your location.

Paul
 
Don't fergit a spagetti bush or two. Ain't nuthin better (cept fer a tamater an mayo sammich) then fresh spaghetti an homegrowed
tamater sauce.....
 

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