Help with disc questions

[grady1977]

I have a kubota grand l40 3240 4 wheel drive with front end loader on it and I am wondering if i could accomplish much with a set of 5 foot disc for smoothing out some old ruts in my pasture. i have a box blade but can't seem to get much done with it. any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

 

[Egon]

Give it a try on a small plot. Can't hurt anything can it? You might need some patience and if the soil is really dry you may get disappointed.

 

[slowzuki]

I'm thinking he doesn't have them yet Egon, wondering whether to spend the money.

Before buying the disc, what problems are you having with the box blade? I've never run them but I assume you'd need to lower the teeth and rip the ground all up before levelling.

When grading with a tractor, you will find going very slow and predicting what the depth of cut on the blade will be from driving over humps with the front end does is key. If you get it really loose the front loader can sometimes grade better due to being on the results of the smoothing instead of in the rough ground.

 

[Egon]

I'm thinking he doesn't have them yet Egon, wondering whether to spend the money.

Oops, I made a mistake.

Starting from fresh:

If you can access some loose dirt [make some with the loader] spread it out over the ruts and then use a drag as long as you can pull to go back and forth over the area. It may get smoother.

The ultimate of course would be proper cultivation.

 

[tessiers]

I have the same problem and I have not had much luck with the disc. I recently bought a book on using and maintaining old equipment and the section on plows and harrows suggests disking to break up the surface trash, as they call it IE weeds. Then plowing to turn the sod down. Then disking again to break up the dirt under the sod, followed by dragging with a spring tooth harrow to smooth and flatten the loose soil. I have a disk and I did buy a plow this year but I have not tried it yet. Nothing in the ground happening here until may.

 

[slowzuki]

I think the norm nowadays would skip a few steps. You'd probably plow the trash and accept it will be messy. Let it sit then disc it, let it sit, disc again.

 

[wushaw]

Yes you can disk it up and then smooth it out by dragging tires, fence post, bed springs...etc behind tractor or atv and you can get it real nice and smooth.
Ya might want to add some seed at dragging time to get some grass growing.

 

[CCWKen]

Extend the scarifiers on your box blade and add more weight to it. If you can't break up ruts with that, a disk isn't going to help. Finish off with a drag as the others have said. Or just fill them with your loader.

 

[tessiers]

no Box blade in the world is going to break up the sod clumps, The plow turns it under and exposes new soil but short of a rototiller the sod will clump in anything I have tried. I am talking a mowable pasture not simply knocking off the ridges.

 

[Gary Fowler]

If you get a heavy disc, you can break up any thing short of concrete with it. It may take 10 passes but every time a disc blade hits a clump it will slice off some of it. Get a disc with scalloped blade rather than smooth and it cuts better. Most of the 3 PH disc are rather light framed and may need to add a few concrete blocks or some railroad steel like mine. I dont know how much it weighs but to get it off the trailer, I had the use the curl on the bucket, the FEL boom wouldnt lift it. I then had the trailer pull out from under it and lowered it till it was just off the ground. THe rear tires were practically floating. It is an 8 foot disc and give the YM4220D all it wants. It will remove ruts, brush, grass etc but even this thing wont do it in one pass. Just keep cross cutting or diagonal cutting those ruts and it will fill them in. I would make 2 or 3 passes in the direction of the ruts to get some loosen soil and fill in the ruts some, then diagonal across them or cross cut them or both. If you have a drag behind your disc, like a log or an old railroad steel works great, it will smooth it out as you go.