Wanted!.. Help on Potato Planters and Pickers

[TractorChick]

i'm looking for a potato planter for the back and a picker thing for the potatos. Don't have much knowledge on these things so i was hoping that yall could help me with that too.
thanx

[Rudi]

Amanda:

Gee, that is my second twin daughter's name.. and the designer of my avatar and the Team Cub avatar . it is a beautiful name

I have two of the Potato Pickers.. they are hard to find here, although from my understanding they are more common in Central Canada and the US, mostly because Massey-Harris built them in their Hamilton Ontario plant back in the 20's and 30's.

I have the one in the upper left corner which is the Massey-Harris #1 Potato Digger.



I also have finally the Erecting Instructions for the Massey-Harris No. 1 Potato Digger, including Care and Operating Instructions booklet. It took almost 2 years to find the manual, but at least now I have one.

It really works, and I mean really does work and work well behind Ellie. She is no where near the mechanical condition that I understand your Cub is in, which is pretty much as good as it gets.. congratulations btw...
And it digs, tumbles gently, cleans and transports the potatos to the rear deck without damage and gets rid of all the dirt and what ever clumps of soil/sod that may get picked up. In fact, they can be put in the cold room directly, or you can elect to wash and air dry as long as they are not in the sun.

As for a Potato Planter, if you look at Rudi's Hiller project, in slides 6 and 7 forward, you can see how we cover them. To make the row after plowing and discing.. you start halfway over the edge of the garden and drive down the plot. Then you put your right front wheel in the first track and drive down the plot, and you keep repeating. Then you put in 6-12-12 or whatever your soil needs, then pop in the taters eyes up about every foot, then you use the hiller. It is the old fashioned way, takes some time, but works quite well.

I too am looking for a more efficient way to plant the spuds, as I intend to actually feed my family and as they up and get married and have families of their own, to feed their needs as well..

As soon as I find a decent potato planter I will post.. or hopefully someone on the forum has one with pics, and a manual

[Virginia Mike]

I don't know how big a patch you want to plant, but Mechanical Transplanter makes a potato and bulb kit to go on their transplanters.
It requires two people, one to drive, one to drop sets.
We used one when truck farming. Used a Zaga 1 row 3pt. digger.
Best,
Mike

[Rudi]

Mike:

Got pics? Info?

[Eugene]

When I was a kid, Grandpa had a potato digger. It was a single blade with a grate across the top of the blade. You drove down the center of the potato row with the digger in the ground. Potatoes would pop up in front of the blade then pass under the grate, leaving a row of potatoes to be picked up by hand.

That's probably not a very good description, but that was 55 years ago.

Eugene

[Cub-Bud]

Living as close as I do to the Sweet Potato Capital of the world, Vardaman, MS, I was able to get a couple of pics of a digger at the Sweet Potato Festival last year.

[Rudi]

Eugene:

That is basically how the #1 operates, except that it has a chain bed.. and you can either let the taters fall to the ground, or fall to a wagon connected in behind. It is really cool how it works. Beats the heck out of the windmill diggers...

[jostev]

here's some info on picking taters, it's not fun when you have to do alot...

the digger we use at work is a two row, tow behind JD, it had a few farmer modifications, but they just strattled the two rows, and the tater digger dropped down, and the dirt fell thru the little bars going crossways, and taters road along the top and dropped off the back....

Johnny

[Rudi]

CB:

Now, that is a unit I would not mind having at all. Talk about a potato digger that is custom sized for a Cub... wow! Ellie could pull that all day and not even burp once..... The M-H #1 is at least 2 to 2.5 times the size of that puppy, and I can tell you it weighs a ton.... or feels that anyway when you try to lift it by hand. I got rid of the front wheels.. maybe I shouldn't have, but I really had no use for it, and the dolly had cracks anyways..

But that is some nice. Wish I could find on that size. Be perfect

[Eugene]

I think Johnny and I are talking about the same unit.

The one Grandpa had was about the size of the 193 plow, one row. It wasn't very heavy. Not much more than the spade, depiced in the photos, and the grate. If the ground was loose and dry, the dirt dropped through the grate while the potatoes and clods passed over the grate.

Eugene

Groundhogs ate off the potato stems this year. Wife and I usually plant a few potatoes every year, just to have fresh new (small) potatoes with fresh peas.

[Virginia Mike]

Sorry Rudi, no photos. The planter is an accessory for the regular transplanter. the chain and pockets are relaced with a chain with paddles and a plate coveres the rear of the chute. the kit cost less than $100 when I bought them 15 years ago. The transplanters are cheap in the wake of the tobacco buy-out. I've seem them go forless than $100 at auctions.
The digger was Spainish or Italian, sold through Lienbach Equipment in NC.
Best,
Mike

[Daniel H.]

Rudi,

Mechanical transplanter has a picture on their site under options.



Here is the Holland Transplanter bulb holder which they claim will work for potatoes.



Daniel

[Virginia Mike]

I found it!

http://www.marketfarm.com

Everything for the truck gardener.
Best,
Mike

[jostev]

Eugene, i think that most/all tater diggers are close to the same thing, just depending on size the one in the pictures is about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of the one we used at work...

Johnny

[400lbsonacubseatspring]

The logic of them is quite the same.....you either let them fall back to the row, or have them drop onto a wagon........

if you let them fall back onto the ground, you gotta pick them back up, but you leave the big dirt clumps, rocks, and nasty potatoes on the ground....

If you let them go into the wagon, you gotta pick out the nasty stuff.

I'm fond of option two, since there's less bending involved, but in heavy clay soil, you do get a lot of dirt clumps that have to go back to the field.....

even after the digger goes through, you gotta run a middle buster and pick by hand, or you'll miss about 1/3 of the crop......in a big application that's ok, but in a truck patch, that's totally unacceptable........

At least that's how it works in the heavy red clay around here.....your own potato harvesting issues will vary as to soil types, rain, and climate, accordingly...... Our potatoes always went deep....much deeper than the seed potato, due to the clay and the rain.......that may not happen in your situation. Yet our Kennebec's brought top price in the Philly produce markets as big, French-Fry potatoes. Our "seconds" were highly sought after by Wise Potato chips in their day. These days, no one wants a potato that big.......