Merry Tiller Potatoes

[gillettadam]

Hi all. At the start of this year I planted my Potatoes at 26 inches between the rows. Bulking them up worked well with my merry tiller and potato ridger, but only when the plants were just above the surface. We’ve had a fair bit of rain lately and it’s begun to level off my ridges so I thought I’d run the machine through again just to bulk the ridges back up. Unfortunately it seems that the extension tubes for my ratchet wheels are going to hit the plants as these measure 28 inches wide when on the tiller, so although I can set the wheels narrow enough to miss the plants the tubes themselves catch. I’m guessing next year I’ll need to plant at 32 or 34 inch spacings? This seems very wide to me, my Dad uses a Massey 135 for his potatoes and the Massey implements work at 28 inches between the rows, so for a merry tiller to need to go wider between the rows than a tractor seems a bit counter intuitive to me. If anyone has any experience or a manual, or even better both for the merry tiller ridger I’d be grateful to know how you use your machine. I did think about using the smaller 12″ wheels directly on the rotor shafts without tubes, but these don’t seem to give enough traction when I had a practice run on some unplanted rotavated ground so I’m dubious about going that way. The 16″ ratchet wheels worked really well, it’s just that now the plants have grown I have a problem! It’s not the biggest problem in the world as I haven’t got that many plants so I can build the ridges back up with a shovel this year but it’d be nice to know how to do it properly next year. It was so close to working well this year too!

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[andyfrost]

When using a merry tiller all I used to use were the two internal rotors combined with the ridger. I found that by using the rotors “backwards” it improved the traction so to speak.
I now use a Howard bantam system , which are by miles the best potato machine .

Andy.

[wristpin]

From a position of total ignorance of the job in hand I seem to remember the MT accessory sheet showing some dinner plate sized discs called “ crop guards” . Would they have any application in this case ?

[andyfrost]

Life is always about opinions , but personally I never could see the real point in those discs , the optional inturned outer rotors did exactly the same thing.

Andy.

[vhgmcbuddy]

I think Andy ,s Rotors are the “Finger tines” that were a popular extra to produce a fine tilth for the seed bed , The merry tiller book describes them as giving excellent traction, and they are right, they do, my problem is trying to steer the thing in a straight line. you can also get for the merry tiller special “Narrow slasher tynes” that are designed to work between the rows, using the back wheels for stability.

[andyfrost]

I actually learned the ridging idea from my Father , he bought a Titan brand new in the early 70s , I spent hours with it as a youngster ridging up Leeks , never used the finger tines , just the two inner tines , it worked extremely well

Andy.

[vhgmcbuddy]

Interested to see your comment Andy regarding the Howard Bantam, I have one waiting as always for restoration, It came with a ridger so when up and running, I will look forward to using it for my potatoe planting. Cheers Plonker

[will-haggle]

Dad and I used his merry tiller to bout up the potatoes but we used the basic rotors (finger tines), they are narrow enough and give good traction.

[gillettadam]

Thankyou all for your replies. I’ll have to have a play with various spacings and methods next year. Seems fairly unanimous to use an inner set of tines of one variety or another which will give a good reduction in width. I do have a set of crop guard tines, both disk and inward turned rotors so might give those a go too to see how I get on.

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