The art of plowing

[WarrenF]

Generally, most of the ground out here is irrigated with concrete ditches and siphon tubes. There is another method as well, it is called gated pipe. Gated pipe is about a 6 inch pipe with slide opening every 36 inches. You "set" your water by opening the slide gates to the desired amount. If you would like to see a picture of siphon tube irrigation go here.....Siphon Tube irrigation again pictures from idaho photos on webshots.

Here is an interesting development out here. Many who are growing onions, have gone to a drip irrigation set up. They can filter the water enough so the drip lines do not clog.....and they can even "inject" the chemicals needed for a healthy crop right into the drip system. The production level goes way up on fields of onions irrigated this way.

I had occasion to travel to South Dakota around Pierre and east,this past early summer. That is impressive country back there, with farms that were 4 and 5 thousand acres. If you had that size farm out here.....you would have 20 to 30 people working just to keep up with the water. Out there they were farming it with two and three people....IMPRESSIVE.

 

[Egon]

Thanks warren.

The drip irrigation sounds interesting.

The 4 or 5 thousand acre farms must be something!

It would be interesting to see their management systems as well as the implements in use.

 

[RobJ]

Several problems with this where I am. Soil is mostly clay. When dry it is very hard and with a typical 7' disk you can barely scratch the surface on previously unprepped 'soil'. It would take a lot of work to get down 3". When the soil is wetter the disk will function more like a plow and it will prepare a good seed bed. I did this this spring and the deer 'mix' that I planted came up great, but so did all the weeds and grasses that were already there. The disk just does not do a good of killing the existing vegetation. A disk and a sprayer would probably do great. But I find that turning the turf with a plow works really well in that regard.

In that real heavy clay in the bottom, I came up with this contraption. The chisels loosen it up just enough (and all my little L can handle). then a run with the disk.

You can see in general my plots are pretty small. Just enough to slow them down!

 

[N80]

Rob, I don't know what you'd call that thing but it looks cool and it looks perfect for the job. I guess that it loosens things up enough to allow the disk to really dig in well. When I first started doing food plots I just used the rippers on my boxblade and it did a pretty good job. But grass and weeds was still a problem.

I've got several plots about the size of the one in your picture. My biggest one is about 1/3 acre, another one is 1/4 acre. The rest are 'patches'. But I have to say, the soil in that picture looks beautiful compared to what I've got. It may sound like a tall tale but over the years I've become convinced that I've got some or the worse dirt around. The reason one of my food plots even exists is that pine trees wouldn't even grow there! With a few years of plowing, disking and liming I can get a decent stand of sunflowers or oats or sorghum to grow in it.

 

[Carlos_Silva]

Rob here in portugal those are very common, I don't know what you call them over there. (If someone knows, please post !! )

In the picture is the one of my Kubota L185 it has 5 "teeth", notice the springs !!

The springs prevent the tractor from stopping very sudden, when it hits something Big (For example a stump) !!!

The Kubota L2900 Pulls one with 9 teeth !

Greets Carlos Silva

 

[flusher]

Rob here in portugal those are very common, I don't know what you call them over there. (If someone knows, please post !! )

In the picture is the one of my Kubota L185 it has 5 "teeth", notice the springs !!

The springs prevent the tractor from stopping very sudden, when it hits something Big (For example a stump) !!!

The Kubota L2900 Pulls one with 9 teeth !

Greets Carlos Silva

I have something similar--a spring tooth harrow.

 

[Egon]

I believe that would be called a chisel toothed cultivator in the terminology of the area with which I am familiar Carlos. The only difference would be the the size of the implement and it would be a drawn implement not a three point hitch. Usually it would have been used on the initial cultivating when converting hay land/ pasture back to grain crops.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

Rob here in portugal those are very common, I don't know what you call them over there. (If someone knows, please post !! )

In the picture is the one of my Kubota L185 it has 5 "teeth", notice the springs !!

The springs prevent the tractor from stopping very sudden, when it hits something Big (For example a stump) !!!

The Kubota L2900 Pulls one with 9 teeth !

Greets Carlos Silva

"Back in the day" when those were new, most manufacturers termed that a "tiller". Times change.

 

[Shirleyshusband]

Well now that looks similar to this one. Got it for $26 on ebay and used it to keep the weeds down in the garden.

 

[N80]

Twenty six dollars? Man, that's awesome. What do you pull it with?