The extra few inches I needed were readily available at rediculous expense from our local farm machinery shop in the form of a power-take-off extension, and look like this...
and not really surprisingly attach here
So that you can connect up the drive shaft between the PTO and the Potato harvester like this.
That was the easy bit. It took a little while to work out which levers I needed to put where, how to keep it at the right depth (the grounds not exactly level so there's a fair amount of adjustment under way) but after a little practice on a row I had already dug I set to work on a half dug row, with considerable success as you can see.
As I have previously stated the harvest is a little on the low side due to complete lack of care and weeding during the growing season but after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing I manage to harvest the rest of the short (double) row that I had already started digging.
The other rows are longer and slightly flatter so I hope with a little adjustment and better technique it will go better and faster and there'll be a tick on the jobs board before you know it..
2 comments:
Congratulations (yet again). When we planted potatoes, it wasn't even necessary to dig them up at all because we normally ended up with less than we planted.
Question? Is it any quicker to use a mechanical digger or do you just enjoy the experience!
Definately quicker and less back breaking.. The Job's finished now. Hacking away the worst of the weeds took most time, and the potato harvester wasn't so happy with all the extra roots, but it worked OK...
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