Video 1:
Hi, I'm Ted, from Everything Attachments. We're here today with our little BX. We had to wait a few days. As soon as we got done with the B with this plow yesterday, or a few days ago, we really had some really hard rains. So even though it looks like the top of this is dried, it's actually quite wet. Peanut's gotten in here. He isn't sure if it's going to pull it or not today because it is still wet.
So this is the same plow we were using on the B with all the same settings. We were able to adjust the coulter to where it's not into these center stabilizer bars, which can be a problem. We're at the limit on moving it back as a far as it'll go and up as far as it'll go, so we'll see how that works. We've got the gauge wheel on it, which is going to make it a lot easier to use on a tractor with an up or down lift, not having a position control lift.
So this is the same plow that we used for the Everything Attachments plow that comes industrial yellow. We simply paint it orange to go with the orange tractors and the Land Shark series of attachments that we have. Unfortunately, our Land Shark decal is covered up by the gauge wheel there.
And just for the gauge wheel, you can see the trouble we go to. Instead of using the plastic donuts which come from China, and they've gotten so cheap every year that the centers crack in a couple years, the donut rots off of them. So whether you leave it inside or out, this steel wheel is made out of three-eighths pipe and a three-eighths center. That should be there forever.
Now, we're deep inside this stitch where we were really cutting it deep with that BX. This may go off to a rough start, but we'll get it right before we end. This is the way we like to do our videos, where we don't really know much more than you do, and we just take the good with the bad and run with it and make it work. Go ahead, Peanut, let's see what it does.
So he's in the actual...those tires...we're going to have to offset the plow, which is good. That'll give the coulter even more room. Come on up. So now what we're going to do, we made this bar here about two inches wider than what our compact plow used to be, simply to bring the arms out a little further so the coulter does has room to still work on this. So the offset is a little different in the size of the tractors between the B and the BX, that's why it's adjustable, and we're going to move the plow all the way over to this side to give us the right furrow to the moldboard room.
Okay, so we were in the furrow with the way it was adjusted for the B, and just really nothing was right. The plow was exactly behind the rear tire, which wasn't going to be the right place. So there's a lot of adjustments on this plow, and I've learned one thing after adjusting everything on this plow: borrowing somebody else's plow and having to do this and put it all back is probably...I would have my own, just to start with, after having to adjust all this.
Okay, and as you can see, this top link is running at a pretty good angle here and that's one of the things you do to get your furrow right. So we've brought the plow over here, so now the plow's on a little bit of an angle. So normally what you would do is, we'd put the pin to the back hole. That's straightens the plow back out. Except in this case, it hits the linkage for the stabilizers on this BX.
Now, the linkages for centers used to be a lot shorter, but that wasn't as good because a lot of things didn't work right. And now that they've moved it this far back, we've got interference here so we had to go back to the center hole, which it isn't perfect. It isn't going to matter a lot that it's on a little bit of an angle. You know, if this was just going to go on my BX, I would just saw that ear off right there, put it in the back hole, and be able to use it on my tractor and not worry about it.
But we've adjusted the whole plow over. You can see where the non-painted area is, so we've shifted the plow about three inches. We've shifted the whole center of the linkage over about three or four inches, and now we have the plow point right back in the middle of the plow. As you can see, this is on a little bit of an angle, which should have been corrected there, but it shouldn't matter a whole lot. It's just not perfect, and perfect is really the way we like to have it.
We've re-tightened all the stabilizer linkages. Now that we've moved it over, we have quite a bit more room for our coulter there, so that should be fine. The gauge wheel's going to help a ton with the up and down lift. And so we're starting in a deep hole that was made by the B the other day, and we're just going to start back where we ended and see how it goes.
We figure this first row is going to be pretty tough. We've got a set of ag tires for this that are on it, so these are wider and they're not going to be quite as aggressive, especially the one that's on the grass with it a little bit wet. It was just raining here just a second ago. So we'll see how it does.
Peanut, jump on it. You might even hold the diff lock in, just to keep the tire from spinning on the grass the first pass. It's starting to rain a little bit now. So we've got it about right. It's still taking a pass and we've got it in the furrow, but it looks like Peanut's having...hit your diff lock, Peanut! Peanut, you're digging a hole. There we go. Peanut! Hold on. Your coulter's not turning, raise it up.
All right, so after loosening everything up to adjust it over, we had left the coulter loose. I noticed it not turning, so we've retightened that back up. We're going to back up a few inches, drop it back in the hole. We think we've got it pretty well adjusted and we're going to give it another try. As you can see, the bottom of the hitch of the BX in the furrow that was made by the B yesterday is actually dragging, so none of that's helping with the pulling issues. Make sure you've got your diff lock in because it's really liking to spin on that new grass, Peanut.
Oh yeah, that's better. The coulter's working right. It's cutting the grass, making it easier to plow. The gauge wheel's working fully, keeping his depth correct. He's a little deep there. He's going to have to lift up. I could go down a little bit with the gauge wheel, I guess. As you can see, when you're not using the gauge wheel and you're doing it manually, he's got about four different levels there in 10 feet, just because he's having to manually adjust it.
For a little tractor which is considered to be a subcompact, which is just a little bit bigger than a real heavy duty lawn and garden tractor. It is a full category one limited hitch. It's able to plow like a big tractor. It's not quite as fast, but it's getting the job done. And there are a lot of BX's in this size of subcompact tractors sold in this industry for two reasons: they fit in the garage well, you can do just about anything with it at its own pace that you can a big tractor, and they don't cost as much. The problem is getting the specialized equipment to really fit and work right with these smaller tractors since they're fairly new.
Go all the way down, Peanut. He's trying to keep it up just a little bit to make it plow a little easier. It's still going a full foot deep.
So the other day when we had the plow adjusted, the problem we had was, unfortunately, we didn't have the right tools with us. And so on a B series, there's two notches for these holes and they were in the back notch. When they're in the back notch, it won't let it go down as far or up as far, but it gives you more leverage. This only has one hole, so we're having to leave it there, but it is allowing us to get the plow all the way down and get the beam flat. Yesterday when we were here, we were running it with it pitched down just a hair because we didn't have the adjustments to let the lift arms down.
Okay, so everything is fit and he's got his lift all the way up. The coulter didn't hit anything, but it was close. Peanut's little butt won't hardly keep the seat sensor on because he doesn't weigh but about 130 pounds his whole life. Lucky him. And that's asking a lot of a little tractor, but in the end, you could have an absolute gorgeous garden, as good as anyone with a larger tractor or whatever.
It's still actually pointed down just a little bit, according to the back gauge. I'm going to raise the top link, a little length in the top link, and drop the back of the plow down a little bit. And we need to actually go down with the coulter some because it's not cutting the grass in front of it. You see how jagged the edge is right there? It's because the coulter's not working at this time. I'm going to lower it, as bad as I hate to.
Okay, so the garden's getting a little bigger than I actually wanted, but we're going to make a couple more passes because we keep having to make adjustments. We lowered the coulter where it's going to cut better, leave a smoother edge. And the good thing is if this is your plow and your tractor, you adjust all this one time and don't let anybody borrow it, and it'll always be perfect every time you go to it.
The gauge wheel's running all the way down. It's running as deep as it's going to run. Peanut says the garden's harder on that end, that's because that's only been done one year up there. Lowered the plow down even more to make that bottom gauge work leveler. We've gotten our angles in all right. We should be pretty good right here, right off the bat.
Now, this is virgin ground here. This has never been plowed. He's going all the way down with it now. I may have taken too much pitch out of the front to get it all the way down. Every year you plow ground, it gets better.
All right. So a lot of people would like to have better instructions on how to plow, but past these videos and just trial and error, there's not much better you can do.
Hey, Peanut! The bottom needs to come down a little bit more. I need to come back up just a little bit. Bump it, now let it back down. I moved it against that, here. All right, see how that does. This is definitely some good, hard ground. It's as hard as it's going to get for around here, being that it's never been plowed before and it's got sod on top of it, which the sod, believe it or not, is your worst enemy.
Now we're going to do the disc harrow. These two thin rows that are for two rows of okra, two rows of corn because they grow so tall. They take up so much light if you put them on both sides of a small garden, so we're going to do those on strips. This grass is going to be the biggest enemy for the light-weight disc harrow we brought. We're not sure how that'll work.
Once you've done a garden for years, a disc harrow will always work good. But in conditions like this, a rotavator we've got here, we could do it in one pass with no problem, or at least not have to...we would get a good job. It'll be interesting to see how the smallest disc harrow we make does on this grass.
Video 2:
Ted: Hi, I'm Ted with Everything Attachments, and we're here today at my house, where I've had a garden for many years, but the last few years I haven't had a garden. I really missed it, so we're gonna put a garden back in. It's straight over grass.
I can tell where the garden is, you may be able to tell. And then we're gonna add two long strips out through here, we'll show you that, where we can plant corn or okra, something like that, so we can keep the western or eastern sun from being able to be blocked from the whole garden.
We'll put the tall stuff on the strips, and we'll put our normal squash, cucumbers and everything that we like to have up here in the square part where I've always had a garden. You can tell where it is because it's a little greener than the rest of it.
I'm here with Peanut, we're glad to be here with Peanut as always. This is our brand new B series tractor. It's a 3350 SU. It's a hydro-static tractor. We got what most people don't get, which are the agriculture tires, because what we mostly do is pull things in the dirt, you know, garden things like that.
Most people in general, and that's what I would get for the average homeowner, would get the R4 tire. Still pulls pretty good in the dirt, but you can do things on the turf, your loader works take stuff there without tearing up your turf as bad.
This is red clay here. It's Monday morning, or Monday afternoon. We did get about a half inch of rain Sunday, but I think this is gonna be long way from being muddy. I think this red clay will be a little bit sticky, and that's where this particular mole board, that we designed in house, will really come in, because there's a cavity right here that you can't really see, and the way this kicks out.
And so red clay, the more this gets slick and the more the paint gets worn off this, the better it's gonna plow. This cavity right here allows air to get under that sticky red clay and lets the cavitation break it away so it'll roll on over instead of trying to just stick to the mole board.
And we make every piece of this plow in house except for the shear right here which we buy from Empire Plow, a US company, and we're glad to do that.
Now this is our new Landshark line, and it's mainly only that because this particular one is orange, and this plow we've had for many years at Everything Attachments, and it was always built for a small compact tractor.
We really didn't have to make any changes on this plow. Still comes in industrial yellow if that's what you want, you don't want the orange, or on the Landshark attachments you'll always be able to find it in orange. And it's just made for this size of tractor.
We've got our stabilizer bars tight. Right now the plow is level and we'll make our first pass with it level and then as we get in the furrow, we'll re-correct with our side link here, and get it level once the tractor is leaning. That way it'll keep everything going.
For any of the subcompact tractors, whether you have a John Deere, a TZ New Holland, any of the subcompacts, this is gonna be still the perfect plow.
We would have our BX here, but Travis borrowed it for the weekend and hasn't returned it, so we're gonna use the B. We may take a couple passes tomorrow to add to this video if we've got time to put it on the BX, but it doesn't take that much horsepower to pull a plow.
Once you get to the speed that you're able to cut through the ground good, and it's rolling over completely where the green turns to red and it's totally turned upside down, which the perfect time to plow this would have been in the fall. So this could have gotten turned under, frozen, loosened this old hard clay up, and rotted that grass that's on the top side to let it become your compost.
But we're stuck with it, it's spring time, we're gonna pretty much go to plowing to planting here in the next week. We'll also get done... we'll do the plow, we'll do the garden-bedder, the cultivator, the planter, and anything else that I can think of that goes into what it takes to make the perfect garden with a small tractor.
We'll go ahead and get Peanut started. We're gonna start and probably plow this square out first that we originally had. We're gonna make it just a tad bit smaller since we're gonna make two 100 foot runs. We're gonna make two runs, and then we're gonna skip about four feet, and make two more runs where we'll have some area to work the corn and the okra and stuff in between it. So go ahead and start where you normally used to, Peanut, and we'll see where it goes.
The one thing that would definitely help on this size of tractor...does this have an up and down lift on it, Peanut? Okay, so this has an up and down lift, it doesn't have a position control lift.
Now, you should have a knob that will control how fast this plow drops. Does this tractor have that? Drop it down wherever you gotta adjust it. Okay, so what he's gonna do, he's adjusting it...and the best way to adjust this, is raise it all the way to the top, close it off like a water spigot, let the left all the way down, and it won't go anywhere because you've closed it off. Then start releasing it at the rate you like it to fall, is the best way to adjust an up and down lift.
Now postionally lift, meaning if where you put it is where it goes every time, definitely is a plus for plowing and a lot of things, especially grading, but it's just not what most small tractors have.
This is an up or down lift, and the best thing you can have to add to this to this attachment to make plowing easy for you in tough conditions, especially when you've got sod on the ground, and this is mostly old wire grass, which is tougher to get through than you think, the best thing we could've put on here would have been a gauge wheel and probably a colter, just to make everything work better, but this is what we've got. We're gonna go with it today just to show you what you can do with the least, and the other two options just make everything better and easier.
I'm gonna go to the back, just make sure all the adjustments are coming out right. You may pitch the front down just a little bit. Looks like it ought to go down just a little bit to start with. The more you pitch the front of the plow down, the more it goes through this turf easier and the better it'll do.
Once you get broken in well, you may wanna back some of this out to keep it from trying to dip on you.
You know what, the more...let me turn it to the side a little. Hey, you're under it now. Once you get the sod off the top, everything'll be a whole lot easier.
That's good. So now I'm gonna readjust this plow so it can be on an angle and it's not pitched down quite as much. All right, so let me change the angle a little bit.
You want me to take some of that pitch out of it, Peanut?
So it's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing, turning it completely upside down where the sod is on the bottom. So it's trying to go deeper and deeper because I've got the front pointed way down to get through this grass easily. We'll take a little bit of that out of it.
Let me take some of that pitch out where it won't try to dive on you quite as bad. Come on down.
So it's up to the very top of the share on the front of that, which is about eight or 10 inches. That's where a gauge wheel would help a ton here.
Okay, so we made two passes, and we should've come out here fully prepared to start with. We ran back to the store, which is only two miles away from the house I've lived in since I was 19.
We went and got a colter which is gonna cut this crabgrass, make it easier to pull up, make it easier on the tractor. It was blowing a little black smoke and it was taking a lot of horsepower for what it really doesn't have to if you cut the grass before you go through it. And he was having to fight it just a little bit because it is an up or down lift instead of position control. So we went ahead and put the gauge wheel on it.
We may have it adjusted a little bit high right now, but we'll adjust it and get it right where he can just make passes without having to do anything but let it down and go. So you're back in the groove. I don't have a clue where everything's adjusted at the moment, but we'll adjust it just like you would at the house.
So the colter's starting to go down in the ground now. It's splitting the grass really good. Are you all the way down? Let me go ahead and go down...you're deep. Okay, the wheel's starting to run, let's try. You're deep. So it's making it a lot easier for him to pull it now.
It leaves a really clean line when that colter cuts through there. That colter just slices the ground like a big pizza wheel. It's a lot deeper furrow than we had because he can control it better.
Let me go down just a tad with the wheel. And on some tractors that have this internal stabilizer bars, you don't have a lot of play in there for some tractors. This tractor has a nice amount. I'm gonna go with right there.
Once you adjust this for your tractor, and don't let the neighbors borrow it, you shouldn't have to do this but one time. But we're doing it just like you would at home from the first time, because I had no idea where to start. I'm gonna take a little of the pitch out here too, Peanut. All right, let's see how that does.
Colter's slicing good, wheel's on the ground, perfect. We don't get rained on here, we're gonna be good.
And depending on how big your garden is...if your garden was an acre, you'd probably start in the middle, start slight swings from different directions, you'd still be putting everything one direction. But when you're doing a small patch like this, it's just as quick and easy to back back up and restart a straight row.
You can tell that colter on the front of it is just making it a lot easier for the tractor to make a pass, and if you've got a really viney area or anything worse than this, it just helps that much more.
So he's not touching the lift level, he's just putting it down and letting it ride on the gauge wheel. That particular gauge wheel...we looked at a lot of gauge wheels when we ran out from the supplier we were getting them from, and they were a big rubber donut.
So after three or five years out in the sun, that's gonna crack and fall off, so we didn't like that, so we went ahead and just fabricated out of an eight inch piece of pipe, made our steel center, and made something that'll last you a lifetime.
All right. Even though that's a compact plow, the actual mole board that goes on the bottom is a full size 12 inch plow, just like was on all the old Ford plows. Double plows, triple plows, back in the '40s and '50s, that's pretty much the model we went after.
It's doing exactly what it should be. The only thing I could do to make it a little bit better would be to take out a little bit of the pitch that it's got down on the front of it. I'll take out just a little bit more, as long as it stays on the ground, we'll be good.
I'm gonna take a little bit more of that pitch out of it, Peanut, and see if it'll still go in good. Let it down. All right.
So we got the plow adjusted perfectly right where the 12 inch...even though the sheer is longer than 12 inches, the way they're measuring it is the width from left to right. So it's a 16-inch piece put on an angle, but it takes a 12-inch path out.
As you can tell, it's starting to take some of the paint off the back of this, and when it's all the way down, it's running so level that it's just cutting the right amount, and this is running between working on the wheel and up just a little bit and not. So that means we've just about got it perfect. When it needs to roll on this, it does, and it's staying the amount of depth that we want it to in the ground.
That looks good.
So my shoe is an exact foot, and we're getting more than a foot of height here. That's as deep as you need to be with this plow. It's leaving a perfectly flat bottom in the furrow before the next round gets piled in. That's just about perfect right there.
We're gonna kinda put an edge on the garden here, just to keep the water from being able to come out the lowest end real easy.
Okay, so on the very first pass, it didn't go but about this deep, but that's because it was already set up for the tractor to be in the furrow, so the plow was way over corrected when it's on flat ground. So instead of going through all the adjustments on the first one, we just took off the grass, and now we're back in the furrow and everything should be good.
This has never been plowed here.
Tomorrow we'll try to get back in the ground. We'll try to get...we'll try to go a couple more passes with the BX, just so you can see how to same plow works on even a smaller tractor. We'll bring the rotavator with us and we'll till all of this up nice where it'll be good working conditions for the garden bedder. When I'm done, I like to be able to plant by hand. Now we will use, especially on this long row, we'll use a Cole planter, but in general, I like to get the ground to where you can work it with your hands.
Looks like we're plowing a little bit slow, but that's actually the right speed as he's going down through there. Once the ground lays over, as long as it's laying over, you can go a little faster, but if it starts going into the next furrow, if it starts going too far, you're just going too fast.
So he's probably travelling around five miles an hour, four, and that's about as fast you wanna plow without putting the dirt too far over into the next furrow.
All of this land over here that my house was built on when I was 19 years old, it actually came from Peanut's family. Peanut and I have been friends for a long time. In 1983, my dad and I traded his father, Darrell, a new Ford 2310 for this two acres of property here. This used to be where they grew melons for a long time when his grandmother was alive.
We're getting a picture of the mole board here we'll show you, and it's starting to get slicked up a little better. The shinier it gets, the longer you use them, the better they'll plow. And you can see Peanut's got it on a new row here, and right now it just looks totally jacked out of shape. It looks like it's leaning the wrong way, it's angled the wrong way, and that's because it's the first pass.
I could adjust everything just back and get one perfect pass on through the grass, but then I would simply have to readjust it back where it is once we make that pass. So we're just gonna take the top off of it, and that tractor will get in the furrow, then we'll be back adjusted right.
When you've got a plow that's basically not leaving anything to the left and it's pushing everything to the right, it's because that colter's cutting everything and it's just doing the job that it's supposed to do.
And everything's not adjusted to do this exactly, but I just wanna put an edge on the garden and bring back in the loose stuff best I can before I start to till this.
Peanut may have to play with it just a little bit to get this right because it's not normally what we do. It's gonna be a rough ride across all that loose dirt.
Every time those wheels pick up really high, it makes it tough for the plow to stay in. It's probably actually...the tractor lift is probably going all the way to the bottom, but just pulling it out of the ground because the tractor's going so high.
That's as low as the lift will let it go, isn't it, Peanut?
There were a couple times when the plow either wasn't running against the gauge wheel, but it was still cutting deep enough that it didn't really matter. And especially coming back when the tractor was riding really high, it barely would go in the ground, and that's because of two reasons.
One, there's two sets of holes in these draw bars here, and if I move this pin to the front one, it's gonna give it a lot more area to go down. Also, we just noticed there's a stop right here on the selector for the up and down, and it has some room extra that it could've been moved down to let the lift go a little lower. So between the two, we were still okay, but we would have been a little better.
Tomorrow when we come out here, make a few passes with the BX, we'll make sure we can set it down the full amount, and we'll show you that even a smaller tractor is still capable of pulling this full 12 inch sized plow.
So if you have any problems or questions that you'd like to know about before you go to plow in your area, give us a call or an email at Everything Attachments, and we'll make sure that you get the right plow for the size of your tractor.
We have three other plows to offer: a full size plow that uses that same foot, with a 12, 14, and 16 inch sheer on it with a bigger mole board, that will actually just let you take a bigger path at one time. The frame will be taller on a full size plow. And we also have a double plow that'll let you do both even faster in different sizes.
