Middle buster

[Robin Hood]

So a friend of mine has a middle buster that he doesn’t want any more. I am not familiar with them. Can this be used for trenching a row for seed potatoes? And would it work for bring sweet potatoes out of the ground. I’ve never really found an efficient way to harvest them without bruising them too bad.
Thanks for your help.

 

[used red MN]

Yes, it could be used to trench for seed potatoes. You will have to fill a lot of trench in between the spots the seeds are placed. I suppose the raised ridges could be used for part of the hilling later if you practice that. We normally planted potatoes with a “drain type spade” Example spade We just stomped it in to the approximate correct depth shoved the handle forward and dropped the seed in behind it and pulled the spade out. There is always a chance of damage when digging the potatoes utilizing one of these. The balance between the amount of damage vs somewhat less labor will have to be evaluated to see what is acceptable.

 

[PJH]

So a friend of mine has a middle buster that he doesn’t want any more. I am not familiar with them. Can this be used for trenching a row for seed potatoes? And would it work for bring sweet potatoes out of the ground. I’ve never really found an efficient way to harvest them without bruising them too bad.
Thanks for your help.

I have a homemade one that we use for digging both Irish and sweet potatoes. For the sweet potatoes, I first ease down the rows with my manure loader bucket a few inches above the potato ridge. That cleans the vines from the patch and makes digging easier. We find that we damage about the same amount of potatoes with the middle buster as we do hand digging with the potato fork. We tried the middle buster one time and never went back to the potato fork.

 

[PJH]

I have a homemade one that we use for digging both Irish and sweet potatoes. For the sweet potatoes, I first ease down the rows with my manure loader bucket a few inches above the potato ridge. That cleans the vines from the patch and makes digging easier. We find that we damage about the same amount of potatoes with the middle buster as we do hand digging with the potato fork. We tried the middle buster one time and never went back to the potato fork.

 

[RJKeith]

I use mine for planting potatoes.

 

[Fordy20]

They are OK for a single row, but if you plant multiple rows they need to be spaced far enough apart to avoid the tractor tire running on the adjacent row.

 

[Jim in LA]

I have a Dearborn double middle buster for the 8N that was given to my Dad by a neighbor decades ago. They used it farming sweet potatoes til they were able to get bigger equipment. We used it mostly as a single plow(the plow assemblies are quite heavy). We trenched the gas line from the meter to the house in ‘65(1800+ ft.) and we used it planting and digging potatoes. Now that I have two operational 8Ns I can start using it again. It won’t work on any of my John Deeres without some modifications.