RIXRIG

[piro222]

Hi RIXRIG,

I had looked into building a similar rig myself, and the commercially available ones were pretty spendy, at least for my budget. There are quite a number of commercial units available to see photos to get an idea of what would be involved. Here's a good example ..

https://www.berryhilldrip.com/RB-448...ic-mulch..html

In general, what you would need to do is build a toolbar … in this case, I suggest a rectangular frame of square tubing, with the 3 point attach hardware at the front. Your actual soil working tools and plastic mulch roll holding fixturing would mount on that.

You didn't mention what category of 3 point you were working with … garden tractor hitches are generally cat 0, and small farm utility tractors are usually cat 1. The issue would be the weight of the attachment (unless you have additional support wheels on the implement) for the 3 point hitch to lift up … utility tractors being able to heft more weight to pick up the toolbar to move it to a new row.

From what you indicated, it sounds like you want to do is to raise hills, hold the mulch rolls, lay down the mulch, then cover the mulch edges with dirt. An additional function you might consider is laying down drip irrigation tape at the same time. From your intended functions, you would lay out crossmembers within the square tube rectangle to do the functions you want … first would be the bedshaping, second would be holding the roll, third would be continuously laying the mulch on the hill, and finally scooping dirt over the mulch edges to hold the plastic into place.

Googling “plastic mulch layer” brings up lots of references and pictures of commercial units, to give you an idea of how other successful units are built (reusing ideas reduces the number of prototypes I have to build and experiment with to get success). YouTube also has a good number of videos of homebuilt units that are pretty instructive on how to build one … here are a couple of my favorite links of homebuilts … first one doesn't do any bedshaping or raising …

second one here does radical bedshaping in the front section …

and if you don't need to raise the beds, and have a low power garden tractor … here's a look at a homebuilt walk-behind tractor mulch laying unit (not 3 point, but same idea, you would just add the 3 point hitch hardware at the front of the frame) ...

What I decided to do in my case, was to break down the bedshaping and mulching activities into two different tools. In my area, I need fairly high raised beds to get good drainage due to the high clay content of the soil. The raised bed hilling is the most labor intensive part for me, and I do that now by hand and shovel, so to expand the garden, this is most important issue for me. I have a JD 810 3 cyl diesel with a category 1 three point hitch and I recently acquired an IH Farmall 100 (just like a Super A, only it's the follow-on model) with the IH one point hitch. For next season, I intend to modify a furrower to the 1-point hitch to do the hilling, and continue to do the drip tape and mulch laying by hand. The Farmall is in the process of renovation for the job right now. Maybe a mulcher will be next, when the garden gets so large, that laying mulch by hand is too much of a chore.

In any case, I hope this helps get your ideas started. I noticed that you didn't have a welder listed in your tool inventory or acquired skills. I don't think that a wood frame would be strong enough to do bedshaping or disk work, though there probably isn't a lot of force on the tools to actually lay the mulch down, and you might get away with a wooden frame for that.

As for a welder, any old buzz-box AC welder would do … I picked one up for a song in my area, folks around here have a surplus of them as many are upgrading to MIG or inverter units …

Good luck, and keep us posted on your progress ...