Cultivators

What is a Cultivator?  Lets start off by explaining what a cultivator is and why you would want to use one. Cultivators are basically a device that loosens up soil in preparation of planting seeds. While cultivators may come in a few different forms such as a walk-behind or a pull-behind and for this article we’ll stick with the attachment kind that you pull behind a tractor. When preparing land for a garden you want to make sure the soil is loose and easy to manage. By loosening up the soil you allow more air, water, and nutrients to reach deeper in the ground which is perfect for seed growth. Digging up weeds that take away soil nutrients from crops is another benefit of using cultivators.

Cultivators are simple yet effective as there’s not much to them and they are easy to use. Most cultivator designs are similar and sort of a V-shape pattern with C-shaped tines. You can also find some with a straight bar design as well. If you have hard compact soil the V-shaped might offer a little more stability and strength however the tines are just as important.  As you can see on Everything Attachments Single Row Cultivator they use Steel Spring c-tines with high carbon points. The Steel Spring c-tines allows the tines more flexibility and helps to prevent breaks and bending.

Garden Bedders

What is a Garden Bedder also known as Garden Hiller? Now that we got an idea of what cultivators are lets take a look at Garden Bedders. The main purpose of a garden bedder is to create seed beds for planting seeds. Like the Cultivators the Garden betters have a simple design consisting of a steel beam welded onto a 3 point hitch as you can see on the GB50 by Everything Attachment. The steel beam which can come in a few different sizes ranging from 48″ to 69″ in width each with multiple sets of attachment holes. The attachment holes can be used to adjust the spacing of the discs and tines to create the desired hill/seedbed.

The two angled 14 inch discs create perfect seed hills while the two outside c-tines with shovel points help dig up old roots and weeds.  Heat treated blades that are bolt-on for easy replacement. The dics or hillers use heavy duty ball bearings, a 3/4″ arbor bolt, and have two sealed bearings to keep the dirt out.

Cultivators VS Garden Bedders

Okay so now we know a little bit about both the cultivators and the garden bedders why choose one over the other? While they both work well together if you had to choose one I would think it would be the garden bedder. Technically the garden bedder is a cultivator too and has an advantage over other cultivators as it can cultivate and make seedbeds at the same time. Yes you should really cultivate before using a garden bedder but if you strapped for time and cash then a garden bedder would be a better choice. With that being said if your ground is hard and solid you really need to use a cultivator first or risk damaging your garden bedder. If money isn’t holding you back then you could also consider a Rotary Tiller which would do a better tilling job than both the cultivator and garden bedder. Just remember after tilling you would still want to use the bedder to make those seedbeds!

What are your thoughts? Which do you consider to be more valuable or the go-to attachment?