I have 25 acres of giant bermuda here that has been in production for 2 seasons now. This will be the third.
We graze our horses on it and bale for hay. Normally I'm on a 28 day cycle with cutting, fertilizing an baling. Last year we really did great and got lucky with timing the cuttings between rain. My yields are down though a little and the ag extension and everyone else tells me I need to run a renovator over it all to aerate the soil and allow the water to work in easier.
The problem is noone around me has a pasture renovator or has even heard of one. I'm planning to build my own soon using a set of fertilizer knives and clymer coulters but it's several months off. I just can't afford it right now.
My neighbor told me to just run my old JD rotary hoe over it once a month. To me that thing is about the most worthless piece of equipment I own. It came with the farm and it may have been useful back when this was all dryland cotton but I've tried pulling it across the pasture and it just barely scratches the surface. I think I'm just wasting fuel with it.
My problem is that in the two years the fields have been producing the ground really has compacted pretty bad. Before we could take a 4 inch rain storm and it would soak in pretty quick. Now if we even get an inch of rain I end up with 3 feet of standing water on the bottom part of my field and it all runs off into the ditch out in front of our property slowly.
I can imagine that it's also taking the hundreds of dollars worth of fertilizer I put out each month with it too. Our soil is mostly sandy loam and a couple acres or randall clay they call it around here. That's in the lowest spot that floods regularly. I'd love to build a pond down there in that clay but I'm sure the fish would not be safe to eat with all the fertilizer I use.
Are there any old farmers tricks to rigging up some other implement to do the job out there or does anyone on here halfway close to Lubbock have a renovator I could possibly borrow for a weekend?
I've been wondering if straightening out the discs on my big offset or maybe replacing the sweeps with points on my chisel plow would work as good as a renovator but my feeling is that either of those options will just tear up the ground too much.
We graze our horses on it and bale for hay. Normally I'm on a 28 day cycle with cutting, fertilizing an baling. Last year we really did great and got lucky with timing the cuttings between rain. My yields are down though a little and the ag extension and everyone else tells me I need to run a renovator over it all to aerate the soil and allow the water to work in easier.
The problem is noone around me has a pasture renovator or has even heard of one. I'm planning to build my own soon using a set of fertilizer knives and clymer coulters but it's several months off. I just can't afford it right now.
My neighbor told me to just run my old JD rotary hoe over it once a month. To me that thing is about the most worthless piece of equipment I own. It came with the farm and it may have been useful back when this was all dryland cotton but I've tried pulling it across the pasture and it just barely scratches the surface. I think I'm just wasting fuel with it.
My problem is that in the two years the fields have been producing the ground really has compacted pretty bad. Before we could take a 4 inch rain storm and it would soak in pretty quick. Now if we even get an inch of rain I end up with 3 feet of standing water on the bottom part of my field and it all runs off into the ditch out in front of our property slowly.
I can imagine that it's also taking the hundreds of dollars worth of fertilizer I put out each month with it too. Our soil is mostly sandy loam and a couple acres or randall clay they call it around here. That's in the lowest spot that floods regularly. I'd love to build a pond down there in that clay but I'm sure the fish would not be safe to eat with all the fertilizer I use.
Are there any old farmers tricks to rigging up some other implement to do the job out there or does anyone on here halfway close to Lubbock have a renovator I could possibly borrow for a weekend?
I've been wondering if straightening out the discs on my big offset or maybe replacing the sweeps with points on my chisel plow would work as good as a renovator but my feeling is that either of those options will just tear up the ground too much.
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