30th September

This year I have been looking at solar powered bed weeders, but they are really pricey, and come in at thirty thousand pounds,

But they would save a fortune on diesel, and will greatly reduce the compaction of the soil, especially if it’s wet.

One other thing it will really help, is the tractor, when we are bed weeding, we have the tractor in the creeper gear box, this helps us to go really slow if its weedy, it can go slow enough that it would take two hours to cover just 200 meters, but this isn’t very good for it’s engine as it spends weeks just ticking over.

Two years ago I was looking at mulch laying machines and Squash planting machines, after seeing the prices of those, I eventually made my own, total cost of both machines would have been over twenty thousand pounds, but with using old implements and buying some steel excluding my time it cost just £200, and has saved a enormous amount of time.                                                                                                                                                                                                        Before I made those machines, we had to lay all the mulch film and by hand, and plant all ten thousand squash plats by hand, this used to take us two weeks with four people.

Now Rab and me can lay all the mulch film and plant the ten thousand squash plants in two easy days, a huge saving in time.

So I’m thinking about making my own tractor less bed weeder, I could do this quite easily, and attach a wee petrol engine, with gears.

But I am keener to make it solar powered.

Here is my sticking point, I know nothing about solar driven engines, and to save time in researching, is there anyone reading this got any ideas of how this works, and could possible give me some pointers in where to start.

If I do manage to go solar powered with the bed weeder, and don’t need to attach a petrol engine, I will then build a solar powered planter for the field.

Any help on the solar power, would be a great help.