How do I Reclaim a Field ?

[Buck]

Gary,

I have never used a single scarifier, but my scraper has seven. I tried both my tiller and my box scraper with scarifiers on to loosen the soil. Hands down, and this is suprising to me, I would choose the scraper for any future work like this. The tiller simply mixes the sod up to well with the topsoil, requiring much more soil to be removed to get the land level.

I think your farmer friend may be onto something. I've been watching the farmers and how they achieve the smooth fields before planting. Plows are rather cheap and if you plow the area now, turning the vegetation into the earth, you'll be in a better position for smoothing in the spring. Hopefully, the existing vegetation would rot before early summer. Please keep us informed on your decisions and progress!

Buck

 

[cowboydoc]

While I agree that just mowing will eventually do the job it depends on how nice of a field you want. Personally I like nice smooth pastures. When I want to redo a field I take it back down to the beginnings. I'll first spray the field and kill everything, roundup or glyphomax works really well. Then either chisel plow or regular plow it. Get a soil sample and if you need lime put it on this fall. Then next spring disc it all really good. Then get a cultipaker or a good harrow and get it all smooth. Then drill in a good grass mix depending on what you want. This will give you immediate nice land next summer.

 

[JoeReal]

MY wife and I bought an old farm house in town that sits on a slopy lot with seven acres exactly 3 years ago. It had totally neglected fields for 20 + years. I cut the big trees and stumped about 2 acres after it was bush hogged and made a lawn with this section. The rest we bush hogged only. There are thousands of lupine growing on the other acres so we wanted to preserve this area as much as possible. I'm slowly stumping this area. As far as the 2 acres of lawn ,I had someone come in with a york rake . He was able to pull all the small roots out and rake the junk and rocks into piles. I picked this stuff up with my tlb and buried it in a low spot on the property. I then got someone to hydroseed. We now have a nice looking lawn. This was done the first year. Bush hogged in the fall, stumped and raked and seeded in the spring. By the fall we had a nice lawn.

 

[em14]

The use of a dozier is just to expensive and not necessary for a field .... the farmer friend was right ... but there is another emplement that you should consider that you will need time and again after your trees start to grow as well as after they are mature ... a disk harrow .... normally to break the ground, which mixes the vegetation with the soil so that the vegetation will decompose (free nutrients) and cuts up the "surface" roots, levels and smooths out the ground, you need to disk-harrow it ... there are two basic disk that you need to consider ... the notched and the smooth .... the notched will cut the debrie and roots and smooth will finish the job ... you can get disk-harrows that have all notched or all smooth or notched on the front row and smooth on the back row ... I woul reccomend an emplement that is worked using yiur 3 point hitch ... you can get towed disk-harrows but normally they are to large for small tractors ...You may need to make more than one pass ... disk-harrowing is good to prepare seed beds and to break the ground before you fertilize as well as clean the field of weeds ... later you will want to mow regularly to keep the weeds down when it is not neccessary to disk (normal maintenance) ... remember to plant your trees in rows that are wide enough for you to harrow and mow ... you also need to be able to harvest using a wagon behind your tractor or just a large box on the 3 point hitch ... you should talk to two more people that will be extremely important to your success 1. the County Extenstion Service and 2. your Tractor Dealer .... Oh yes ... one more point ... Get Good Equipment and you will buy it one time ....

 

[frank_f15]

was not quite clear , but are u wanting to START AN ORCHARD OR WAS IT AN ORCHARD, I GET THE IMPRESSION IT IS JUST FIELD AND U WANT TO START A N ORCHARD. IS THAT CORRECT? (OOPS) sorry about that

 

[Gary]

Its an overgrown field I hope to turn into an orchard.
Thanks,
Gary

 

[glennmac]

Buck, you say you cut the drainage ditch with your box scraper? I need to cut ditches but don't want to spend the money for a backhoe. I never thought of a boxblade, which I don't have. It would seem to be too wide. If you did do it with a boxblade, what did you do with the soil when the box was full to get it out of the ditch?

 

[Egon]

Gary:
I've been working on a project just like yours for a few years now. All I've had was a B7100 with a loader, rotatiller and lots of time. There were some clumps of choke cherries that were removed in the spring with the loader when it was wet. I just got a start and kept rolling over the root clumps and finally pilling them up. Then moved them around to shake of the dirt and piled them out of the road. Smaller trees were dug up roots and all and piled for evening campfires. Then it was many an hour with the tiller and picking rocks as I went along. The tilling was done from many different angles and slowly the ground leveled out by the tiller pulling some dirt along with it.

With a 3010 I'd go for a single bottom plow, as has been suggested, and then spend time tilling and levelling till you have the field looking like you want. Remember there are different moleboards for breaking sod. Guess I'm saying " Follow Cowboydoc's procedure. " Then plant grasses of your choice.
If you just mow your grass type will become selective to those that can survive constant cutting to a low height which may not be what you wish.

Good luck with you project.

Egon

 

[cisco]

I have converted about 7.5 acres of "wild" land into a passable grassy field with tons of trees over the past 2 years. It was originally covered with vines, thick brush, 1-4 inch saplings and poison ivy, in amongst many large trees and some marshy spots (I filled the latter). If you want a finished lawn, go with the annihilation approach with a dozer, or if tractor dependent with a brush cutter then a plow or heavy disc (problem with a 3010 is the discs for such aren't real heavy, and it takes a lot of weight to get the disc edges into hard soil - yes, you can try just after a heavy rain - but you better like mud). Anyhow, for a reasonable field covered with native grass, I agree with others that a good brush cutter, set low, will over the course of a year or so, result in a native grass covered field. If you really need the sapling roots zapped (they will rot over a few years), then the cheapest approach is to lower the scarifiers on a heavy box blade (I've a 3410, and the box blade has 5 scarifiers that can extend below the box by about 8 inches) - for stumps of 4-5+ inch trees, you can either dig them out or try to pull the whole tree up with a chain (as described by others). Don't use a tiller (which you don't need if you aren't after a lawn appearance) until the larger stumps have been dealt with, unless you want to bend a bunch of tines.
Good luck - whatever you do, it'll be a lot of "quality tractor time", and the result will be gratifying.

 

[Egon]

Cisco:
Them tines don't bend, they just break.

Egon