Need to buy a disc

[jenkinsph]

Come on, that's just silly. You likely never had it set up properly. It all depends on what you're doing. A tiller is great for gardening. For actual farm work, a disk is the proper tool.

Depends on the tiller, depends on the disk, depends on what you have to pull either one. A high horsepower compact will perform better with a tiller harnessing the pto power. You can get 16' wide tillers with tilling depths of about 12 inches.

 

[Bob Ha]

Last year I disked about 10 acres (sandy loam soil) for seeding giant Bermuda grass. The 10 acres had a lot of large weeds and Love grass so the disking was less than desirable. The grass didn't take so this year I decided on trying something different and purchased a used hydraulic 4 Bottom plow. My 72 HP tractor can handle it but not easily. The last two weekends I've been preparing the same 10 acres for sprigging Midland 99 Bermuda grass. The first weekend I turned over the soil with bottom plow and the next weekend I disked it with a harrow behind the disk. I will need to disk a second time with harrow for perfection. The quality difference between the JD bottom plow and the cheaply type disk from TSC is night and day. If I need to plow any more after this year I'll be looking for a used tandem John Deere disk. I know they are a little pricey but my time and fuel also costs. Only problem is I may need a bigger tractor. I think I should hide all the guns before I tell the wife.

 

[wolc123]

I wouldnt want to do more than a couple acres with a tiller. Beyond that a disc is usually more efficient. That said however, I wouldnt waste money on a 3-point disc. A pull or transport type is the way to go if you are looking to get-r-done with a minimum number of passes and using minimum fuel. 3-point discs require more power and passes per unit width because all sections do not follow ground contour as well as they do on transport or pull-types. In my opinion, anyone with smaller acreages and the need to transport over the road would be better off with a tiller than a 3-point disc. Having used many different tillers, pull-type, transport and 3-point discs over the years, I no longer see any good use for a 3-point disc. This rubs some folks the wrong way, particularly those trying to peddle "junk" to unknowing buyers.

 

[RollingsFarms]

3 pt disk comes in more handy for my uses then a tiller would. i wouldn't mind having a nice tiller though, but for doing fire breaks a disk is ideal imo. i would like to have a pull type disk with a lift cylinder, but i haven't come accross one that i thought was good enough to part me from my money. the current disk i have is a 300 series Leinbach 3 pt. disk. it's 6'9" with 20" notched blades front and back. has easy adjustable gangs, and i keep them at the most aggressive setting. this is the best cutting disk i've ever owned. i can sink it to the axles easily and make my tractor grunt.

 

[123rday]

I bought a used TSC angle iron 6' disk. I had a weld break where the 3 point connects. I welded some heavier angle iron on both sides and drilled my one inch holes for the pins. Works good, but I found I had to put a 125lb wheel weight on too and set it aggressivly to turn the soil in two passes to "meet" the guidelines for CRP. Now I need to straighten the disk out and go back over it followed by a packer to smooth things out so when they tell me I need to brush hog it won't be so rough. Off subject... I also need to go around and finish getting rid of the thornapple trees so I don't end up with more than the one front flat tire I ended up with.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Looks like the Frontier costs around $1950

John Deere - Helpful links

Disks work great in hard soils if you wait for a soaking rain and then wait again for 2-3 days later and get after it. This disk harrow type doesn't work as deep as tiller but much faster.
Don't you have someone around that has a big deep setup that can hit it first heavy and deep? My neighbor did ours. 1st with big disk, 2nd with fine harrow, and last with a water filled roller to smooth it back down. About 13 acres for about $700 while I drank barley pops and filmed him.
This works great for a coastal bermuda field if you get rain after getting it done...

 

[jenkinsph]

Kyle's suggestion to hire it out would be the most economical if you have someone close by to do it.


I looked into getting a new pull type disk last year 8' with 22" notched blades about $7000 for Frontier DH 15 if I recall correctly. Kind of pricey, since my 73" tiller was $2900 so even if a disk is a little faster using a good one I felt it hard to justify.

Using a cheap and light 3pt disk doesn't seem to be any faster than a tiller. You can pull a drag harrow behind the tiller and be ready in one pass for grass.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

Steve, how many acres would you say that you can till before having to replace the tines, the u joints, then the tines again, maybe a gear box etc?

 

[warhammer]

The way this acreage lays out big equipment won't fit. Its a sloping terraced area with more turns than straightaways for big iron.

Looks like the Frontier costs around $1950

John Deere - Helpful links

Disks work great in hard soils if you wait for a soaking rain and then wait again for 2-3 days later and get after it. This disk harrow type doesn't work as deep as tiller but much faster.
Don't you have someone around that has a big deep setup that can hit it first heavy and deep? My neighbor did ours. 1st with big disk, 2nd with fine harrow, and last with a water filled roller to smooth it back down. About 13 acres for about $700 while I drank barley pops and filmed him.
This works great for a coastal bermuda field if you get rain after getting it done...

 

[warhammer]

I'd like to have a tiller.
What dissuades me at this point though is the extra expense of the tiller over the disk and the fact that I want to take over the farming of the 24 acre row crop field that I lease out in the next couple of years.

Warhammer

Kyle's suggestion to hire it out would be the most economical if you have someone close by to do it.


I looked into getting a new pull type disk last year 8' with 22" notched blades about $7000 for Frontier DH 15 if I recall correctly. Kind of pricey, since my 73" tiller was $2900 so even if a disk is a little faster using a good one I felt it hard to justify.

Using a cheap and light 3pt disk doesn't seem to be any faster than a tiller. You can pull a drag harrow behind the tiller and be ready in one pass for grass.