Jeff Gravel didn't like the fact that he couldn't see his cultivator without turning around as he cultivated weeds on his rolling corn and soybean fields.

The Cascade, Iowa, farmer had a 4-row Landoll cultivator, set up for his 38-in. rows. "It's a good cultivator and would have worked great if we had straight rows. But we're farming contour strips and there's not a straight row on the place," he says. As he steered along his contoured rows, the cultivator often veered too far to the side, taking out part of the row, even though Jeff was keeping the wheels right in the row centers.

He wanted to switch to a front-mounted cultivator but he couldn't find a front-mount cultivator that would fit his 1655 Oliver.

He solved the problem by rebuilding the hitch on the Landoll cultivator so it would attach directly to the front of the tractor. "I thought about building a three-point hitch for the front of the tractor, but then it would have been too far out in front. That would have made it too long, and more difficult to turn. Steering it around the contours would have been just as difficult as when it was rear-mounted," he says.

Jeff cut the Landoll's 7 by 7-in. toolbar in half, and then built a framework with parallel linkage to lift it with a hydraulic cylinder. He added a length of smaller square steel tubing behind the narrow front wheels of the tractor to cultivate in the row behind them.

The minimum till cultivator has 20-in. sweeps on each shank to take out weeds.

"It's a little more difficult to hitch up than a 3-point mounted cultivator. You can't just back into it and pick it up. I used four U-bolts to attach it to mounting brackets on the tractor," he says.

A couple of years ago, Jeff switched from 38-in. rows to 30-in. rows and bought a 6-row planter.

"I added a little to the toolbar and added an extra unit on each side, so now we cultivate 6 rows. It works great and handles a lot easier than the rear mounted cultivator," he says.

Later, he added a 3-point mounted sprayer tank and pump behind the tractor, and mounted drop nozzles and broadcast nozzles on the cultivator to enhance his weed control.