Dig this. Dig I must.

[Worth1]

I bet you strip a drive line or you get hung up and OFF YOU GO!!!!!


Worth

[Fusion_power]

You get that thing caught in a root or around a rock and it will spin you like a merry go round.

I'll give a different answer to most of what is above. Deep holes are very beneficial if you live in a dry area and if you don't irrigate. There is a farmer in Israel planting fruit trees in a very arid climate. He digs holes 25 feet deep and fills them with manure, then plants a tree in the top of the hole. The tree sends roots straight down following the nutrients and winds up in the water table which allows it to grow and thrive in spite of the near desert condition at the surface.

I have dug holes 3 feet deep and filled them with amended topsoil with lots of compost and other nutrients. Plants grow with unbelievable vigor and stay lush and productive even in August which is usually our driest month. This is because they followed the nutrients down to the clay layer which is alway moist.

Fusion

[greggf]

Wow! What a manly tool!!

I wanna borrow it, if it doesn't kill you............!

[Mantis]

Be careful with that thing. You want to taste some tomatoes this year , right?

[dice]

Given it's head, a robust tomato plant
will root 3-4' deep. The questions are
does it need to find N-P-K etc throughout
that volume to provide peak production
and does ease of rooting also correlate
to production?

If you provide plenty of organic matter
and a sufficiency of a tomato plant's
most pressing nutritional needs in the top
12" of soil, it may only need the rest of the
depth of roots for a consistent water supply
and perhaps to find silicon and other
minerals (that may be found even in what
would normally be considered nutritionally
poor sandy or heavy clay soil).

With a thick mulch, worms and other
native soil organisms will do a lot for
you.

I've seen ease of rooting correlate to
speed of growth in a lot of different kinds
of plants, but you don't necessarily have
to till to create conditions that promote
easy root penetration:

http://www.cedarmeadowfarm.com/Publi...es/News10.html

(The image of nightcrawlers dragging soon-to-be
earthworm castings down into their burrows
is not soon forgotten.)

Not to belittle the Earl Hole method of
tomato bed preparation, of course. Whatever
works for you.... And not everyone has soil that
is amenable to a mulch-instead-of-till method.

Good opportunity for an experiment: cover crop,
weed-eater, mulch instead of till a section
of bed, till-and-posthole another section
that gets comparable sunlight, top dress
anything that you till in to the "till" section
on top of the "no-till" section (preferably
in fall, so that worms and other soil organisms
have time to bring it down to the root zone
before you plant next spring),
and grow 4 or more plants of the same cultivar
in each section.

If the no-till approach works for you, you could
publish: "How To Turn A Craftsman Tiller Into A
Stump Grinder."

[dcarch]

I am trying to dig deep because:

1. Although some say it will not have much benefit for the work involved, but I haven’t heard that it will do much harm.
2. I haven’t heard too many people have tried it.
3. Mostly because I plant tomatoes very very tight, 18” apart due to the lack of space.
4. I know I do not have good soil below 18”.

Regarding this crazy digger which I made:

1. I don’t have room to store another machine which I use infrequently.
2. I don’t want to spend $400 to $500 for a digger.
3. It’s throttle speed driven, so I can control the speed of the auger from 0 to full speed.
4. It’s clutch/gear driven so there is no chain to be broken.
5. You may notice that the auger bit is actually an ice fishing auger, which cuts less aggressively down.
6. I looked at commercial one-man operated gas auger designs; the mechanical leverage is about 30”. In my contraption, it’s about 50” so I will have a lot less twist/torque to deal with..

In any case, if it doesn’t work, I will be happy to lend it to you guys in one of your Choptag/Tomatopalooza events to make spaghetti sauce.

dcarch :wink:

[Soilsniffer]

Originally Posted by dcarch

I converted my rototiller to an earth digger to help me dig deep.

Geek.

1. I'm jealous you're able to till to a depth of *18* inches. That must be a helluva tiller ... wait, the one you converted to an auger doesn't look like the monster tiller I'm imagining. Either you have >= two tillers, or ... you can get 18" down with the hand tiller??

2. Yeah yeah, if you till, the earthworms are crushed, the mycorrhizae get angry, and the soil crosses its arms and gives you the silent treatment. You know what? It all comes back! Fast!

I will never argue till vs no-till. I have both tilled and non-tilled gardens, and you know what? Both host great vegetables. Both methods work!

3. Catching fish, and burying them at the bottom of a hole. Hmmph. I'm glad I'm at the top of the food chain, that's for sure.

J

[dice]

PS: What do you think about replacing
the other set of blades with some kind
of flywheel (part of an old weight-lifting
set, maybe) that weighs the same as the
posthole-digging extension? That should
improve fuel efficiency and stability.

(I am also remembering hand-drills that
I ruined putting side pressure on a bit to
make a hole bigger or oblong, or trying
to use one with a rotary rasp. Your tiller
clearly has fairly hefty bearings at the
cutting end, but they were perhaps not
designed for this amount of force
exerted in one direction perpendicular
to the drive shaft. OTOH, parts are
probably available if any bearings wear
out unexpectedly.)

You could test drive it drilling a hole beside
a tree with an old tire strapped to it. If it
gets away from you, the tree will limit the
travel, and the tire may save the tiller.

Edit: The hand-drills did not stop working
completely, the mistreatment simply
introduced a wobble into the bearings,
and they never drilled a hole the same
size as the installed bit afterwards.

[Worth1]

This is what I have.
They are fast and I need the exercise.
You wanna race?
http://www.ridgid.com/Tools/Post-Hol...rglass-Handles

Worth

[dcarch]

Originally Posted by Worth1

This is what I have.
They are fast and I need the exercise.
You wanna race?
http://www.ridgid.com/Tools/Post-Hol...rglass-Handles

Worth

dcarch

[tomakers]

Not to rain on your parade, but will the engine run correctly in that position? Just a thought. :-)

[angelique]

Just Curious. How do you stop the top part (motor, etc.) from spinning?

Originally Posted by dcarch

Regarding this crazy digger which I made:

1. I don’t have room to store another machine which I use infrequently.
2. I don’t want to spend $400 to $500 for a digger.

Second question, isn't there a local rental place that might rent safer equiptment that will accomplish the same task?

[dcarch]

Originally Posted by tomakers

Not to rain on your parade, but will the engine run correctly in that position? Just a thought. :-)

Very good question. Not all small engines can operate when they are not in the proper position. This particular engine will operate if I fill the tank full.

Angelique,
If you are talking about the tines, they all will be removed so there will be no danger. I didn't get a chance to remove them for the pictures.
I intend to use it a couple of times a week for the whole year, so it will be very expensive to rent one.

The thing looks dangerous, I believe it is very safe. I am very careful with this knid of things.

dcarch

[angelique]

Just be safe. Take it from me, in November I had an accident with an immersion blender. Needless, to say, 5 stitches and a few months later, I have no feeling in the top portion of my right middle finger.

Angelique

P.S. DH is still finding spots of blood on the kitchen, living room, dining room and entrance walls and ceiling.

[dcarch]

Thanks.

A friend get his fingers crushed by the car door. He lost feeling in his fingers after he recovered from the stitches. He finally went to a finger specialist. He now has most of the feelings back after a second surgery.

dcarch