Patent ID: 6186083
Filing Date: 2001-02-13
Classification: A01C,A01G

Abstract:
In a digger for facilitating application of a material to a mushroom bed wherein said digger includes a compartment for containing a supply of the material to be applied, a longitudinally mounted digging shaft, a plurality of digging tines extending generally radially outwardly from said digging shaft, a drive assembly connected to said digging shaft for rotating said digging shaft to cause said tines to dig into a mushroom bed when said digger is placed on a mushroom bed, conveying structure for conveying the material from said compartment and directing the material toward the mushroom bed generally at the location of said tines digging into the mushroom bed simultaneously with the digging of said tines, the improvement being in that said conveying structure includes a plurality of distributor heads located generally at said tines, a power driven rotatable metering shaft having a plurality of sets of supply pockets for collecting material from said compartment, each of said sets of supply pockets being in periodic communication with a separate outlet hose for depositing the material into a respective said outlet hose during rotation of said metering shaft, each of said outlet hoses leading to a respective one of said distributor heads for supplying the material to said distributor heads, said conveying structure includes a plurality of sets of inlet and outlet hoses, each of said sets of inlet and outlet hoses includes a separate inlet hose for supplying conveying fluid to a respective one of said outlet hoses, said material being deposited into a manifold which interconnects each set of said sets of inlet and outlet hoses, said inlet hose is of smaller diameter than said outlet hose, each of said sets of supply pockets comprises a plurality of circumferentially aligned equally spaced pockets, said compartment having a tapered bottom, said metering shaft being mounted in said tapered bottom of said compartment, said manifold includes a plurality of receiving pockets corresponding in number to the number of sets of said supply pockets and the number of said distributor heads, each pocket of said set of said circumferentially aligned pockets is longitudinally aligned with other supply pockets of said other sets of circumferentially aligned pockets, and said sets of circumferentially aligned pockets communicate with adjacent sets of circumferentially aligned pockets by breaker bridges formed as grooves in an outer surface of said metering shaft.