Source:
Vegetable Farmers and their Weed-Control Machines [DVD]. V. Grubinger and M.J. Else. 1996. University of Vermont Extension. Available for purchase at http://www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/Videos/weedvideo.htm (verified 31 Dec 2008).
This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Weed Control Machines video clip.
Featuring
Tim Taylor, Crossroad Farm. Fairlee, VT.
Audio Text
Here we have the Buddingh Basket Weeder and what we do here is we plant; all of our lettuces grown are transplanted, we do nothing from seed into the field, and it’s all transplanted in a two row bed system. A week after transplanting approximately we’ll come in with the Buddingh basket which is ground-driven off of this chain here. We can go approximately just about as fast as you’d want to drive it on the open field, five miles an hour or so.
Its advantage is that it won’t throw dirt into the lettuce. It moves in this manner and kicks up the weed seeds cultivating at about one inch depending upon where I set it in the ground. We wait about a week because we get a little germination but we don’t want to wait too long because we don’t want the weeds to be too big.
The advantage of the belly mount is that it does not wander. The cultivating tool doesn’t wander in the field as it would behind the tractor when it’s placed behind the tractor. I am able to view straight down at a single row, I can’t see both rows but I can see one row and I can just see exactly where I’m placing the tool. Absolutely exactly. If I daydream a bit and it wanders off I can catch it real quick whereas when it’s behind me in the case of some of the three point hitch tools that I use for cultivation it tends to wander a little more and I tend not to have quite the same control that I would have.
I wanted to stress this. I own two of these Kubotas and this is mounted here all year long. I don’t take this off. It’s not difficult to mount, it just has four bolts here and four bolts on the other side. But I have it set just perfectly the way I want it and I honestly believe you should have a tractor for each piece of cultivating equipment you have. The downside on all cultivation is the setup time.
What we do is, the basket is spaced six inches apart, and I’ll do two passes here. The first pass I’ll be nursed right up next to the radishes down one side. I’ll turn around, come back in the same bed up against the other side as close as I can go. That way, I get within usually an inch to two inches of the crop even though I have six inch spacing in the basket.
This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).
