Why was middle busting popular?

On a lot of my dvd's with footage from the 1930's to the 1950's they show and talk about middle busting being popular down south. I live in the south and I never knew of any old timers that did it or talked about it. Everyone I knew had moldboard plowed. What was middle busting advantages if any?

Jason S., Here in Texas Never saw a moldboard being used Ever! Closest thing to a moldboard plow was our 2-3-4 bottom disc plow to put it in Midwest terms, Here Called a Double, Triple or Fourble disk, then Tandem the ground level a get to Bedding or hence Middle Busting!.
Back to your question........
After land was worked up then it was "Listed" or "Bedded" up! This got your land, in rows, ready to plant ( in the era of planting in the "Bottoms"
Your planter was set to "bust out the tops and plant in the fresh bottom. Also making the crop readily available to catch any rain that Fell, it was funneled right to where the seed was"
Cultivation was accomplished by having a tight Puckering String to drive on the tops a cultivate out the tops throw the soil to the new crop and make a new Row Bottom.
In crops where there was little to no crop residue, the Farmer would fall in, after harvest and bust out the new top which was the row of the crop. make new pretty rows in the fall then fall back across to "Rebed" the Field to have all ground loosened up and ready to catch Fall and Winter Rains being ready to plant in the spring as soon as things were right!
Breaking plows, ie Disc plows weren't used every year.Maybe every 5 or so!
Hope this helps
Later,
John A.

Out here in West Tx most everything was onewayed. The cotton farmers still run beds but are slowly getting away from it.

John, thanks for your explanation. I've never been around middle busting here in my part of NWIA. I do remember seeing it done in the Missouri river bottoms in extreme western Iowa back in the fifties and maybe early sixties but that's long gone now. Jim

Only middlebusters I know of were part of the cultivator rig. Shovels in front and sweeps or middlebusters(just large sweeps) in the rear. Shovels get near the plants and the middlebusters clean out the center of the rows. Course if you're talking about mule drawn the middlebuster was on a set of handles by itself as were the shovels.



Plowing was either a set of disks or moldboards.

It is still common in Louisiana to ''hip'' or ''row up'' fields in the fall to catch rain and let it soak in and prevent runoff, this is done with a multi bottom middle buster but primary tillage is performed first. Back many years ago middle busters were run through corn and cotton to throw dirt to the roots of weak stalked open pollinated varieties to prevent lodging, the buster mounted on the same tool bar behind cultivators.

I'm just south west of Houston. We have gumbo clay and
being on the gulf coast plenty of rain. Middle busters are used
and the crop is planted on top of the "hill". In areas with little
rainfall you would plant in the "bottoms". All has to do with how
much water you get and how the soil drains or in our case
won't drain. I grew up in Iowa and we planted "flat". I had to learn all new terms when I moved down here.

This style rear bedder was the last new bedder I remember selling in about 1980. The tractor required a lot of frt weights to keep frt tires on the ground. Back then flat planting was unheard of where I live.