Potato harvesters are machines that harvest

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Unit ...

es. They work by lifting the potatoes from the bed using a share. Soil and crop are transferred onto a series of webs where the loose soil is sieved out. The potatoes are moved towards the back of the harvester on to a separation unit and then (on human-operated machines) to a picking table where people pick out the stones, clods, and haulms (stems or stalks) by hand. The potatoes then go on to a side elevator and into a trailer or a potato box.

Types

Potato spinner

A potato spinner is connected to a

tractor A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most commo ...

through the

three-point linkage The three-point hitch (British English: three-point linkage) is a widely used type of hitch for attaching ploughs and other implements to an agricultural or industrial tractor. The three points resemble either a triangle, or the letter A. Three-p ...

. Older machines were drawn by

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million yea ...

and were driven by a ground drive. It works by a flat piece of metal which runs horizontal to the ground lifting the

es up and a large wheel with spokes on it called a reel pushing the

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

and potatoes out to the side. The potatoes are then gathered by hand, placed into containers and transported from the field for further packaging. The potato spinner is becoming obsolete because modern potato harvesting equipment eliminates manual gathering of potatoes and leaves fewer potatoes in the soil.

Haulm topper

A haulm topper is an

agricultural machine Agricultural machinery relates to the mechanical structures and devices used in farming or other agriculture. There are many types of such equipment, from hand tools and power tools to tractors and the countless kinds of farm implements that they ...

that cuts

stems ( haulms) before potatoes are harvested. It is like a

flail mower A flail mower is a type of powered garden/agricultural equipment which is used to deal with heavier grass/scrub which a normal lawn mower could not cope with. Some smaller models are self-powered, but many are PTO driven implements, which can at ...

but has the profile of the potato drills. Modern potato farmers often mount a haulm topper on the front of the

and have a trailed potato harvester towed behind the tractor. Toppers can also be rear-mounted. It is a very efficient machine.

External links

Harvesters Agricultural machinery Harvester {{agri-stub