One of the best investments we made last season was our Tilmor walk behind tractor. We use this walk behind tractor to precisely cultivate a variety of crops. This helps us reduce the amount of hand weeding we have to do so we're freed up to grow more food. Now that we're solidly in weeding season we're getting immense value out of this tool.
We have a couple attachments for the Tilmor. Pictured above is what's called a tine weeder. The premise of this is fairly simple: you run the tine weeders right over the crop row either before the crop has emerged from the ground or after it's well established. The tines will uproot and disturb small and very small weeds greatly reducing the amount of weeds present in the crop row. The real trick with this tool is getting the timing right. If the weeds are too big and too well established the tines are ineffective against them. Additionally, if the crop is too small then you're liable to kill your crop as well as the weeds.
The other attachment, which we haven't used yet this season but used extensively last season is our "finger weeder" and sweeps pictured below. The finger weeder has offset stiff rubber fingers that rotate. The fingers then flick small weeds out of the row crop. This tool is fairly tricky to get right as there are many variables at play including soil condition, cash crop size, weed size, finger weeder depth, gauge wheel depth, sweep depth, and spacing for all of the above. This tool requires your crop to be very well established or the fingers will end up killing the crop you're trying to save. When everything is set correctly we can reduce weed populations by up to 90% greatly reducing the time we spend hand weeding.
