This is my first year raising potatoes and I have found them to be one of the easiest vegetables to grow. I have been a subscriber since before this video was made and like looking back at your older videos. Things have changed a lot since the Carmel days.
@TractorTimewithTim I am in Louisiana, I put my yellow russet potatoes in the ground on February 19th. Planted my tomatoes, okra,squash,broccoli, cucumbers,bell peppers, and watermelons on Good Friday. The broccoli of all things is not wanting to take off.
I have the same Hiller/Bedder. I have the best result by setting the disc wider as to split the track left by the tractor. I also set the disc a bit shallower and they cut deeper throwing more dirt. Set your check chains to minimize the hiller from swinging side to side. I built a rack on mine to hold one 16" block and it made a big improvement in less clods and more even ground. It's a good tool but you have to fool with it till you find the sweet spots.
I've been hillin' potatoes with my truck, just use a drop hitch to adjust the heavy hitch. didn't know you could use the HH Hiller with a tractor. that's pretty smart Tim.
I just bought one of these pieces of equipment for healing potatoes have not gotten it together yet but I am glad to see your video give me a little bit of confidence in what I bought thanks for the video great information
Did great for what you had to work with. It's still raining here. Don't know when we're going to be able to get back into the garden. Lucy picked strawberries and had an inch of mud stuck on the bottom of her shoes. Weeds are coming in and I can't get the tiller in to get rid of them. Take care and God Bless!
I am jealous. It never got dry enough here for me to be able to plant any potatoes. You have done a great job and they perked up real nice after they were hilled. Once you find the sweet spot for the hillers make a few marks with a paint pen on the shank and the mount to make sure you can line them up again. Once again a very informative video !!
I use my hiller / bedder to lay off my rows for planting in the spring. It helps keep the spacing even so that I don't have to worry about ripping up the roots of the plants in the next row.
ive got the same tool for hilling, i ended up with (on my JD400) disks same space as tires, no tines, disks angled at about 30deg (included angle) buried my too tall taters just right. the 400 has about the same track width as the 1025 do.it trenched them good, the heavy Hitch product is the sh*t!
my 2 cents worth... if you have a lot more room in your garden.. plant the rows a lot wider apart so you don't have to drive over the row with the tractor, but in between the rows and set the hiller to the very edge of the bar and hill to the outside
Enjoyed the video, especially your daughter's fun sense of humor; she needs to be in more videos! Oh, just noticed this is six years old, she's probably off to college by now lol...
I am a Florida potato farmer. You need a guard on your disc. This is pieces of 1 1/2 inch wide strap metal welded into half an H with one leg a bit longer with a hole in it. You attach it to a tab welded on the hiller shank about 2 inches above the axle. You adjust it where the inside bar is just a bit above the top of the row. The dirt hits it and spreads right under the potato vines making a broad flat shoulder. That way you don't knock the plants over.
@@TractorTimewithTim I got out of farming 25 years ago and never took any photos of that. The strips might be 2 inches. I made a simple drawing and put it on my Google photo album. photos.app.goo.gl/BhjKnd41hWh2GTm76
Beautiful potatoes mine are looking good to I was wondering if mine was to tall but u answered my question but I may try to do mine bout one more time but I think that maybe it great video and thank you for all yr info and letting us watch
Interesting. I've always gone back and forth between the 1, 2 and 3 Family but never thought about ground clearance. Looks the the 2 has around 5" more and 3 is around 6".
You need weight on the hillers! I have done lots of this with my late father, he had a set of hillers with handles and walked behind. I can remember his feet coming off the ground as he pushed down to haul up more dirt. My $.02. :-). Great video.
Tractor Time with Tim Yes I did, I planted in containers using dirt from under the leaf pile. It was pretty dark earth with lots of worms. I mixed in a bunch of leaves because the dirt was sticky and heavy. I poked around in my pot and saw I the stems coming up, almost ready to break through.
Good looking tater plot! Reds and Yukons flower at different stages because of their maturity dates I think. Yukons are an early variety and reds are a main season variety.
Yeah my purple majesty taters grew tons of them last year. German butterball didn't produce any all the years I've grown them. I'm not sure what the reasoning is.
I love the heavy hitch stuff but I am not a big fan of the potato hilling contraption they make. I think I will stick with my potato hilling three point attachment
The rain and saturated ground you did the best you could as soon as you could. IIRC you had 7 or more inches of rain in a few days? Some farmers in your area and North still don't have their corn in the ground according to Travis of "The Rest of the Story" It is just too dang wet, raining every few days over a long period of time. It never gets a chance to dry out.
Potatoes really rebounded fantastic from the drive over. What is your ground clearance, I remember you adding a 2 inch receiver to Johnny some time ago and was wondering what was the lowest point on the bottom of Jonny.
@@TractorTimewithTim Does this mean it's probably not going to work to try and hill potatoes using a small lawn/garden tractor since they aren't as high off the ground?
It's a shame no one makes a compact row crop tractor anymore. The average utility tractor today doesn't have the ground clearance to do row crop work. I have a1963 Farmall 140 as old as me and I used to lay by tobacco knee high with no problem at all.
is that Deere the equivalent of a Kubota bx25d? It sure looks like it but I've never dropped my deck. I've had ideas of making a 3pt mounted rig similar to yours for all my custom needs but due to this season's rain fall and my failure to check the weather all my garden plots need redone
+Brandon Baade yes, comparable to the bx25d and newer bx23s. You've hit on one of the advantages of the Deere. The autoconnect deck is very easy to remove/attach. The new BX is much nicer too. Quick attachment is important on these little guys.
Ok Tim, I think you need a disclaimer that no potatoes were harmed during the making of this video LOL. Im jealous I don''t have a hiller so had to till alongside the plants and than rake the dirt up around them and I wonder why my backs sore LOL.
Good memory Tim, I do I use it for weed control in the rows. I also have a large tiller for the tractor but uses too much real estate between rows. I give my potato row a wide swath so I can get down it with the tiller loosen up the dirt and rake it up on the taters. I keep looking around for a used hiller hope to find one eventually.
Hi Tim they look good at the end ! I was think if some one had the room to make the rows wider if you could hill out word ?do you think it would work that way ? 🤔 but they do look good 😁 take care and have a great up coming weekend ! curt. 🚜 🚜
Trying to figure out what you are doing. I am unsure how to plant taters. Do you build the hill and plant them int the center cut ridge of the hill or do you trench and bury them in the trench then cover them with the hiller. So what's the hiller for after they have gotten going? Do you get more poratoes?
We have other episodes showing the planting. We dig a trench, put the potatoes in it, then cover the trench. This is "hilling" the potatoes. Adding a hill keeps the potatoes further underground, preventing them from getting sun burned. And I think it DOES help the yield somewhat.
i tell ya-u are one lucky son of a gun-them taters look so good. i hope u get buckets full of taters.. i see they are starting to blossom-:-) i need a heavy hitch set up like that-ha!
Jim, your GTT inbox is full. Can you contact me via facebook, GTT PM, or youtube private message. I thought I had your phone number, but I can't find it. Thanks!
Not too much horsepower. Johnny’s 24 is fine. However, Johnny doesn’t have enough ground clearance to do this right. Get something with more ground clearance.
yep. It is interesting how prominent the blooms are on the white (Mega chip / Kennebec) potatoes, but almost none visible on the red lasoda potatoes. We saw little potatoes on the reds when we were hilling (two weeks ago now). ...and the blooms are still on the white potatoes.
+John Hammack we used to grow kennebecs when I was a kid. They always made a big show of it...huge tops and lots of blooms...then, often not much in the way of potatoes! More hat than cattle!
To keep the potatoes from coming to the surface and getting sunburned. We did not get enough hill on the red potatoes. Many of them got sunburned, and were ruined.
seen your daughter wearing a drumline t shirt.my grandson will be a section leader next year on the snare line.junior year.it keeps them busy.he plays in the Grove City High School marching band.
There's no shame in that! lol Marched 4 years drum line in high school, center snare 3 of those. Marched DCI another 3 after high school with Santa Clara and Blue Coats, loved every minute of it. Taught as a drum tech for 4 more years at various Ohio schools. Our pit musicians were some of the most talented people on the field. We even had our own "Johnny" to haul the equipment around. Man I miss those days.
Probably could have done without the cultivator tines and moved the dick hillers out more. I usually set my out to 4 feet. I have a Farmall Super A and it sits taller so I can go over my rows without any of the crops being damaged.
I have had mine for about 10 years. My Grandfather had a Farmall 100. I have welding and fabrication experience and built a 3 point hitch for my Super A. I plow a few gardens and do other jobs with it like grading driveways and bushhogging fields. Would be nice to have a tractor with a FEL.
potatoes aren't too big to be hilling them, the tractor is too low to the ground! need a vegetable tractor or a utility tractor like a farmall cub or ford 9n, would not flatten the plants like this.
