Choosing a Tractor for the Flower Farm
The tractor helps us move lots of plant debris to the compost pile.
February 22, 2024
We purchased a tractor for our 1-acre flower farm in 2022. This was our first ever tractor purchase. If you’re a flower farmer, or any sort of crop farmer, you may be in the market for a tractor to help your operation run more efficiently. In this post, I’ll discuss the questions I had before buying a tractor, what we use the tractor for on our flower farm, and how having a tractor saves us time and makes work more efficient on our small acreage flower farm.
Here are the questions we had before purchasing our tractor for our flower farm
What kind of tractor do I need for a flower farm?
What size tractor do I need for a flower farm?
What horsepower is needed for a tractor?
How can I use a tractor on a flower farm?
What implements do I need for my tractor?
What tractor implements are useful for a flower farm specifically?
Should I buy a used tractor or a new tractor?
Below, I will discuss my thoughts on all of that and more, based on our few seasons of experience with using a tractor on our flower farm. I hope it will shed some light on whether you need a tractor or not, and what kind of tractor and implements you might look into purchasing with confidence.
is a tractor necessary for a small farm?
The first dilemma I racked my brain over was whether we even needed a tractor or not. We grow a small 1-acre plot of cut flower crops using organic methods with low to no tillage. There are many farmers across the world who successfully grow crops on small acreage without a tractor, especially those that grow using no-till and regenerative agriculture practices.
The way we came to our decision to buy a tractor was straightforward — we brainstormed a list of tasks the tractor could help us with on our property and on the farm, and then we weighed the costs of alternative options (manual labor, smaller machines, etc). We are a very small team — farming is accomplished mostly by me and a farm helper who works 2 days/week, and sometimes my husband helps with soil prep and spreading compost on the weekends. My husband does all the mowing of the property which is a time consuming, recurring task.
Related: Considerations When Purchasing Land for a New Farm
Here is the list of functions the tractor helps us accomplish on the flower farm:
Mowing 2 acres of lawn (there is a house on the property that we maintain) and mowing parts of the open field;
Strip mowing around the farm fence and mowing wide pathways in the farm;
Moving bucket loads of compost and wood chips;
Moving other heavy loads with the bucket: concrete blocks for holding down silage tarps, rolls of landscape fabric, moving heavy high tunnel parts; piling tools and other things in the bucket to move into the field from the shed;
Digging trenches or creating berms & swales for drainage with a middlebuster attachment;
Ripping smaller furrows for drainage with a sub soil shank attachment;
Planting and digging up dahlia tubers with the middlebuster;
Tilling new ground with the rotary tiller attachment;
Hilling new permanent raised beds with the disc hiller attachment.
Moving lots of heavy concrete blocks at once with the tractor bucket.
Functions the tractor could provide for us that we haven’t invested in yet:
Moving pallets of materials around the farm (need pallet fork attachment for the bucket)
Saving grass clippings to use as mulch in annual planting beds (need bagger attachment for the mower deck) — we sometimes take the time to rake these up and move them to the farm using the tractor bucket, but it is time consuming and we usually don’t have the time to spend doing it. The free grass mulch would really help keep weeds down during the summer, and add wonderful organic matter to the soil.
Moving bigger amounts of compost and mulch around the field (need dump cart that can be towed)
Spreading compost on the rows (need tow-behind drop spreader) — honestly, we do just fine with hard rakes and will probably never buy a compost spreading implement
Mowing and clearing thick brush (need flail mower)
Broadcast sowing cover crops or wildflower meadows (using a tow-behind broadcast seed spreader)
Related: Winterizing the Flower Farm Using No-Till Soil Building Techniques
Moving composted manure with our tractor bucket.
is buying a tractor worth the cost on a small farm?
For us, buying a tractor has been the best decision we could have made. Overall, the tractor saves us a lot of time in moving compost and mulches around. The tractor also saves our bodies from wear and tear in lessening the load on moving heavy wheelbarrows full of wet compost from long distances, and moving heavy concrete blocks all by hand across the field. We move a lot of concrete blocks around as we move silage tarps around different parts of the field as a form of no-till soil prep and organic weed control.
I think the most important part of having a tractor has been lessening the load on our bodies. As we get older (granted we are still in our 30s but I am thinking ahead), farming will become physically harder, and any harsh physical work we can reduce by using a machine, we do so. Buying a tractor may not be the greatest financial investment (it does not accrue in value nor really hold its value like property does), but the amount of time it saves us in labor and physical injury is invaluable.
Buying a used tractor is much smarter than buying a new one — it’s the same mentality as buying a car. The second you drive it off the lot, it loses value, and it is designed to last a long time. So find yourself a used tractor, if you can.
Related: How to Cover Crop a Flower Farm
a tractor is also a lawnmower
In our case, we have a house on our property that is surrounded by 2+ acres of lawn that needs mowing and maintenance. We also have large swaths of grass to keep mowed around the perimeter of the farm fencing, and even within the farm fence. We knew we needed to buy a riding lawnmower. A well made, commercial-grade riding lawnmower is at least $10,000 (this is a ballpark statement). We knew we needed a riding mower that could handle uneven ground, had a wider deck, and moved faster than the typical household riding lawnmower.
I compared a tractor with a mower deck attachment to a commercial riding lawnmower and the machines were pretty similar in terms of lawn mowing, except for two differences: The tractor is more expensive but the tractor also had the ability to perform many other farming functions than the single function of the riding lawnmower. This was our major deciding factor for buying a tractor rather than a riding lawnmower. The used tractor we bought actually came with a 60-inch mower deck attached to it. Any new tractor can be ordered with a mower deck attachment.
Starting our second flower farm from scratch in 2022 using a bed hiller attachment on the back of our tractor to lay out all of the beds.
how to decide what kind of tractor to buy
I am not a tractor expert — I just happen to own one and use it on my small flower farm. I would recommend going to a tractor dealership and letting them guide you to the right model for your needs. They will ask you what you intend to use the tractor for and they will know how much horsepower the tractor will need based on the implements you intend to use and the work you need to get done.
We have a small sub-compact tractor — the 25-horsepower Kubota B2320. Our tractor successfully performs all of the duties listed above with no problem whatsoever when it is in four wheel drive. Its hardest job is pulling a rotary tiller attachment that weighs around 2,000 pounds, which is does with no problem.
When we started our new, second flower farm in 2022, we started it on a piece of land that had been fallow for a long time. The land was covered in perennial grasses that had been dutifully mowed twice every year. Before that, it was grazed pasture. Before that, it was an apple orchard. I knew the land needed to be chiseled and deep plowed in order to open it up for crop farming, so I hired a local farmer with large equipment to do that initial task for us. Now, subsequent necessary tillage is accomplished using our B-Series Kubota and tiller attachment.
Related: How to Plant Living Clover Pathways
concluding thoughts about how awesome having a tractor is
It’s entirely true that you can farm successfully without a tractor — there is absolutely zero doubts about that. People do it all across the world; even people who could easily access a tractor (they have the resources/funds/location to do so) choose to farm without a tractor.
That’s why I urge you to do a deep brainstorming dive with yourself and farming partners, if you have any, to figure out how a tractor can help you before you just go buy one. We did not take our decision to buy a tractor lightly, but now that we have one, I can’t see ever going back.
