Gravely Garden Tractor Gardening
February 7, 2011
The 2 wheel Gravely Garden tractor was in production for 65 years, and was perfect for a Family Homestead. The number of these tractors built is staggering, so good Gravely equipment and parts are still widely available in the parts of the country where they were popular. They are not a simple mechanical design, so it takes a skilled mechanic to do major repairs. Adapter kits are now available to put modern fuel efficient engines on these fine machines.
The key Gravely Gardening attachment is called a rotary plow. It uses a heavy
spinning set of four blades to cut a single furrow, throwing the soil off to one
side, [like a moldboard plow] except the sod has been pulverized. By
concentrating the power into a 8-10 inch wide furrow, the tractor can work to
the full depth on the first pass in most soil conditions. When I was young and
able, I could rotary plow 1/4 acre per hour in my established garden with a walk
behind tractor.
Annual plowing is just the beginning of what a rotary plow can do. Both the
depth and the width of the furrows it makes are adjustable. It can build raised
beds, and tear them down next year if you want to. It can make furrows to set
out berry bushes, or holes to plant small fruit or Christmas trees. It can make
a trench for planting potatoes, and then come back and cover them. You can hill
the potatoes, berry bushes, or grape vines as the grow too. With a much longer
shaft, and a number of passes,I even dug trenches for underground electric lines
to my chicken coops.
When deeply rotary plowing, the garden is left with shallows trenches about
8-10 inches apart. The soil is a seed bed in one pass, so I used to plant small
seeds in every 3rd or 4th trench, and quickly and gently cover them with a 4
foot wide hay rake drawn across the row. Back then for a market garden, I was
planting rows 360 feet long, and it did not take long to drop in the small seeds
and cover them with a wide rake by hand. Larger seeds like beens and corn or
potatoes can be covered with the rotary plow to what ever depth you like by
adjusting it.
The next most common Gravely Gardening attachment is the Rotary Cultivator. This
is front mounted, and very maneuverable. It was designed to quickly and
shallowly cultivate between rows of plants. It does an extremely through job as
well.
Both the Rotary Plow and the Rotary Cultivator use the same huge right angle
drive gearbox. There is an old style and a new style of each, and without
special adapters, they are not interchangeable. If you have and old style plow,
you would need the old style cultivator. This attachment is all you need to
quickly till in a bed of small grain, and prepare it to be reseeded.It is also
excellent to circle around hills of tomatoes and squash, since it turns very
easily.
You may not think of a mower as a gardening attachment at all, but your garden
needs to have sun, so ordinarily it will be surrounded by grass or small grain
crops, which will need to be mowed, and the 30 inch Gravely deck will also mow
your corn stalks and other tall plant residue at the end of the year. With to
mower on the front of the machine and the instant forward and reverse, it is
perfect for mowing under fruit trees and along garden fences. When mowing rows
of berry bushes and grape vines, you will need to steer in close between the
plants, and back out around them. The extreme maneuverability of a two wheel
Gravely tractor, with its weight balanced on the single axle equipped with an
automotive like differential, is perfect. When you press down a little on the
handle bars, you can swing the tractor around in a complete circle, without
going forward or backward at all.
In addition to the 2 wheel Gravely tractors, very powerful 4 wheel Garden
Tractors were also made. With the correct adapters, 2 wheel attachments can be
used on the riders, and a huge offset rear rototiller was also made just for the
riders.
