DIY Farm Impliments

[Ironman]

yup, that's right. Not a V blade.
It passes under the plant root system and cuts, it so pick and pull is easy. I'm planning on a 6" depth, with that 22 inches distance that Bill figured on.
I'm having all kinds of drive system ideas popping up on yootoobe all of a sudden.
This is a picture of the drive creation I'm trying to do. sort of, the top will be another U joint.

[arizonian]

Originally Posted by Ironman

yup, that's right. Not a V blade.
It passes under the plant root system and cuts, it so pick and pull is easy. I'm planning on a 6" depth, with that 22 inches distance that Bill figured on.
I'm having all kinds of drive system ideas popping up on yootoobe all of a sudden.
This is a picture of the drive creation I'm trying to do. sort of, the top will be another U joint.

Beautiful little machine. That's quite the field for that little tractor.

Would you consider your garden to be a raised bed like in the video?

[Ironman]

Originally Posted by arizonian

Beautiful little machine. That's quite the field for that little tractor.

Would you consider your garden to be a raised bed like in the video?

My tractor is a Kubota of similar size, but not 4wd. If it was, I would probably just use brute force to drag a cutter under the plants like I have been doing for years. The change this year is because we has increased the bed width to 36" from 21" At 21 we were on the edge of traction with the diff lock on, so I am not going to pull a dead knife and hope it works.
Thus the powered undercutter is born or hatched.
We do not have quite a raised bed.The pathways get sort of pounded down and so the plant area is a bit higher. A raised bed is not the issue, digging 8000 garlic by hand is. This plant, unlike an onion has a root system up to 48 inches and is quite determined to stay where it is.

I know Bountyhunter is growing garlic with a raised bed system, he is in a very wet area and it makes sense there.

Here is spring pictures of the two garlic beds, you can barely see a rise in the plant area, but after walking on the path does pack the paths down.
And the new way of planting and why the need for a wider undercutter.

[toprecycler]

So is that black plastic sheet with holes for the plants? Is the sheet to cut down on weeds/ other plants growing mostly?

When you go to harvest, do you remove the sheet separately, then dig the garlic?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Ironman]

Originally Posted by toprecycler

So is that black plastic sheet with holes for the plants? Is the sheet to cut down on weeds/ other plants growing mostly?

When you go to harvest, do you remove the sheet separately, then dig the garlic?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes to both questions. We are getting old and this is what we are trying to do to reduce the weeding labor. It has to reduce weeding and hold more moisture, I think. I would like to have a sickle bar mower off the tractor to cut off tops, before lifting the ground cloth, but it may be just me worrying too much. We should be able to lift it with 2 people and roll it up and then do the undercut.
I have not used this idea before, but I put up pictures to answer Arizionian, because you can see the bed is higher.

[CaddmannQ]

I live about 50 miles from a place called Gilroy which is probably the garlic capital of the known universe.

I have never seen it grown under perforated plastic like this but because of the drought situation here I am sure we are going to see more of this type of farming.

There’s a lot of target irrigation and drip irrigation and greenhouse growing going on.

All I irrigate is my redwood trees and my ornamental lawn and shrubberies. I irrigate a lot of it with used water from raising tropical fish.

I had a friend here that wanted to start a sort of hydroponic plant and tilapia farm here in the San Joaquin. For a little while the idea of being a scientific gentleman Farmer appealed to me, but the guy turned out to be a flake and the whole business went belly up before I got any money involved.

My wife was raised in farm country and while she gardens like a madman she will not grow anything edible. She had to do stuff like pluck chickens and cook tortillas when she was a kid and so nowadays she doesn’t even want to touch a piece of meat. I have to do all the butchering and most of the cooking myself.

LOL Judging by the size of azaleas I can grow on poopy fishwater, I think that all this expensive fish food I’m feeding would turn into some very nice vegetables.

[Ironman]

Originally Posted by CaddmannQ

I live about 50 miles from a place called Gilroy which is probably the garlic capital of the known universe.

Actually it is only a drop in a bucket. China produces 80% of the world garlic supply at 23 million tons. Looking at the quality and flavor of the slant product, the market for good garlic is unlimited.

[mccutter]

Originally Posted by CaddmannQ

I had a friend here that wanted to start a sort of hydroponic plant and tilapia farm here in the San Joaquin.

About 10yrs ago we took a fieldtrip with 4H to a local jail where the female inmates get to work in a greenhouse hydroponic facility. We had to get buzzed in through several doors to get to the garden. They were growing lettuce and raising tilapia simultaneously, both of which were eaten by inmates once harvested.

In a nutshell, water from the tilapia tanks is pumped up into "gutters" with a lid with holes in it for the lettuce. In one side of the gutter and out the other. There were several tanks with tilapia in various stages of development. I'd say the tanks were 20' across and 3-4' high. The poop in the water from the tilapia provides nutrients for the lettuce. There were some other minor crops like flowers and such but primarily lettuce. LINK

[CaddmannQ]

Originally Posted by Ironman

Actually it is only a drop in a bucket. China produces 80% of the world garlic supply at 23 million tons. Looking at the quality and flavor of the slant product, the market for good garlic is unlimited.

Chinese garlic is unknown here. You will never see it for sale. Probably has import restrictions too, but our market is 100% California garlic.

[randydupree]

Down here in the sunny south they grow lots of things under plastic.
Watermelons,tomatos and i'm sure other stuff.
What i have seen from the road is solid sheets,no holes preformed.
And from what i hear and see,theres water tubes in the plastic,each end is attached to an irrigation pipe.
So water is under the plastic.
They set plants as i guess you do,the field workers just poke holes in it and set the plants in place,they ride on a seat thing behind the tractor with the plants at hand.

Your plastic looks thicker/heavier than what they use here.
They put the plastic down with a tractor too,a roller thing rolls it out and they roll dirt over each side to bed it in place.

After they pick the crops they come back in and remove the plastic,and the cages the tomatos grow in and the stakes used to hold it all up.
Huge work,or so it looks to me.

The tomato crop is used for fast food,Wendy's,mcdonalds etc.
They pick everything,then grade it by size in a grid like grading gravel,the proper size goes to market and the rest gets hauled back to the fields where they burst them all and plow them back into the dirt,a huge huge waste of tomatos.

But you guys probably know all of this.