Power Harrows?

   / Power Harrows?
  • Thread Starter
#11  
Efficiency is the main key and pricing is less of a factor. Hence why the power harrows. Rototillers and Rotorvators don't have grader wheel like the power harrows, which means I then have to hand role it or hand rake it, to prep it for seedbed. Power harrows can work sod well, you just have to go over it more than once to break down plant matter like grass. Same for the rotorvators as well if you want to leave a fairly good soil finish on established grass sod, then you have to do it more than once. Never used a rototiller, so can't comment. Also I don't want to invert the soil structure like Rotorvators and Rotortillers do.

I'm going to contact the reseller about the Minigirolit model, I find it hard to believe that the manufacturer would choose a fixed coupling for a soil implement.. or if there is a work around. I've contacted a reseller of Rinaldi in the past, the Rinaldi reseller will send it with the correct parts to fit my Goldoni. My Goldoni comes with a rotavator as part of the deal. I got that for a steal of a price because its old new stock. When it arrives I'll post photo's.
 
   / Power Harrows? #12  
The tillers go a bit deeper and forward rotating tines push fertilizers and green manures down to the root zone where they should theoretically benefit new plants the most. It's usually a once a year proposition, I'm pretty sure the soil ecosystem will re-establish itself if you don't keep screwing with it by tilling. I see a place for tillers and a power harrow in my operation but don't have the funds for a power harrow just yet. The power harrows are superior in many respects but not quite as versatile, the main idea is that it's a fair investment to buy a power harrow so don't settle for anything you won't be happy with. Buy once, cry once!
 
   / Power Harrows?
  • Thread Starter
#13  
Power Harrows work down to 5.5-6", which is more than deep enough for working in green manures in to the soil. Plus the Power Harrows have depth control. Which is important for successive seedbed formation through out the season, when its preferable to work only the top 2" of soil. If the green manure was cut with a flail mower before Harrowing, then it gets partially mulched anyway..

Pushing isn't good when it comes to working soil, it creates a worse hard pan.
 
   / Power Harrows? #14  
your statement is incorrect, they don't work "down", they stir the surface, some will go down due to gravity and displacement of horizontal soil, but the tiller physically moves it down to the rootzone which is much better for incorporating fertilizer. they both work, in this case the tiller works much better. as you say, the harrow is better for not disturbing soil layers, less pulverization of soil, creates better planting beds in all the demos I've seen. But by not inverting layers to a great extent, that means the layer of fertilizer at the top is not being inverted into the lower layers which is desirable for fertilizers. tillers won't destroy your soil unless you till early, deep and often all season long.

deadpan can be cured by avoiding overtillage, by subsoiling, broadforking, or using green manures, as their root systems loosen the soil naturally.
 
   / Power Harrows?
  • Thread Starter
#15  
Right when I said "works down" I was referring to the depth the machine can operate at.. 6" down isn't the surface, not how the machine actually works...That should of been plain to see. The power harrow tines move the soil around enough and at a good speed that fertilisers and green manures can work in down to the depth the machine is set at, to add to that the harrows will pulverise the green manures into smaller sizes too, but depends on what green manure your going to use.. We all know Power Harrows "stir". The whole point of advoiding hard pan formation and advoiding soil inversion is to preserve the soil structure for maximum soil health, root penetration, and for natural soil health. Rotorvators form hard pans worse than power harrows.

Dead panning is less of a problem with Power Harrows so doesn't need to be "cured". But yes for maximum soil health it is advantageous to broad fork it..Or subsoil. I will be using a Broadfork.

I sure enjoy using the power harrow behind my John Deere 6110RC at work...and the stone burier, and the bed former! and the inter row cultivators. Not to mention all the other machine's. But that is me working for and in somebody else business. Growing herbs..In raised beds.

Most of what you state in your last reply is obvious and in large Agriculture here in the UK most farms have moved away from power harrows, and rotorvators ( rototillers ) or any powered tilling.The last powered soil implement most farms used in the UK and EU was power harrows, because well there better than Rotorvators for some of the reasons I've stated. And have gone back to conventional cultivators with various types of arrangements. They only use subsoilers for braking up hard pan or compaction...Or to Aerate the soil if its a wet soil type. And that is the biggest variable, soil type. All this depends on the soil your working..

If I could use the same type of cultivaters that big farms are here in the UK do, I would, but two wheel tractors are not powerful enough for even a miniature arrangement to match the big boys..I've looked at the Cultivators. The best option is the Power Harrows.

My partner already has a successful market garden business. Which I am going to modernise and be the co owner in. Hence why the question of power harrows. It was never a question of shall I get power harrows? It was a question of which power harrows...Because Power Harrows are better than Rotorvator..At everything. Bearing in mind my Goldoni machine comes with a 80cm Rotorvator..So I would have the option of both, but I honestly don't see much use for it, and I even tried to use the Rotorvator to haggle a better deal with the reseller, telling them to keep the Rotorvator, and deduct the price of the Rotorvators from the price of the two wheel tractor.
 
   / Power Harrows? #16  
"Because Power Harrows are better than Rotorvator..At everything." This is incorrect, they're better at everything, except incorporating fertilizers and power composting cover crops, the rototillers are more time efficient and effective for that task.

I've been tilling every season, basically once in spring, maybe twice on the rows where I succession crop (but just a light shallow surface till for seeding or killing weeds) and I haven't found this mythical hardpan yet. I'm sure the truth of it is that a finely pulverized soil, coupled with rain, wind and gravity compaction, and the fact that the soil in deeper layers has more weight above it, leads to harder layers of soil towards the bottom, no matter what kind of tilling you do or don't do.

If the power harrow is shredding the green manures finer than a tiller, it's quite possible the soil structure is being pulverized in the same damaging way tillers do, if the plant residue along with the soil is getting too fine we may be worse off than a tiller in that case. Less fine is ideal because you've pulverized things less, once you break it up by mowing it and get it down in the soil nature will do the rest to make it availalble to future plants. Rototillers and harrows are quite similar, one blade turns vertically and one turns horizontally. Horizontally, soil layers are better preserved, which is good a lot of the time but not when you want to work in fertilizers. If you want to incorporate fertilizers such as chicken manure or green manures, by definition you don't want to preserve the soil structure, because you are trying to blend the fertilizer into the soil evenly throughout the soil, and you want to swiftly move it down into the rootzone of the future plants, thus mixing and changing soil structure. It disrupts the soil ecosystem (bad) but adds needed fertilizers for the new plants (good). The soil ecosystems will re-establish themselves. Hopefully the good outweighs the bad, if not we'd be better to use the Back to Eden "forest floor" method of fertilizing where everything starts as roughage and wood chips on the top, slowly breaks down, eventually forming a nice soil without disrupting anything below, but it takes a lot of time! When we're market gardening for profit with succession cropping we simply don't have that time.

Could a power harrow ultimately do an equal job as a tiller in incorporating fertilizer? MAYBE. If you ran at high enough rpms, made several passes, burned more gas, as I said we aren't physically working the fertilizers down with the power harrow, we are simply displacing soil and letting gravity do its work. On top of that the power harrow doesn't go as deep, tillers are 8" or better for my Grillo tiller, power harrows less, well roots go a lot deeper than even 8" but deeper is better in the case of mixing fertilizers.

In summary, no, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. The power harrow can't both be "better and gentler on soil because it preserves soil structure and doesn't invert or blend the soil layers" and at the same time "better than a tiller at evenly mixing fertilizer from the top of the soil down into the bottom soil layers." If the power harrow worked perfectly for the aim of not inverting soil or mixing soil layers, it wouldn't work for mixing fertilizer at all. It's only because it does in fact mix soil and layers to some extent that it works for incorporating fertilizers at all. When your device is working at one task only because of it's design shortcomings (the unwanted mixing of soil layers), then you know for sure you do NOT have the most efficient tool for the task at hand.


I wonder if anyone can chime in on disc harrows vs power harrows vs rototillers for incorporating crop residue, green manures and fertilizers into the soil. I'm pretty impressed with disc harrows myself, such simple machines that achieve a result very close to the pto powered tillage implements, and much faster/less gas burned.
 
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