6ft Rotory Tiller not getting job done

[tjandrews]

I have found this thread to be very interesting. Fact: the tiller is not the correct tool for virgin ground breaking. Fact: soils varies a great deal from area to area. Fact: the breaking of the soil with some type of plow or disk is often needed.

I am also noticing that several people keep having the compaction problem with their soil and there has been little discussion on remedies for this problem.

Having grown up in SE Ohio and plowing hundreds of gardens in our small town I will offer this solution. Add organic materials to your soil. We brought in truck loads of sawdust, straw, grass clippings, leaves, straw and composted it or added it directly to the gardens. And I mean truck loads. It was amazing now quickly it would disappear into that red clay.

I have found that an alfalfa sod will break up compaction nicely. Those tap roots will go down deep and break up the soil. Of course, they take about five years to complete the job...

 

[tjandrews]

All due respect, that tiller is a lightweight toy. One needs at least a 900 - 1000 pound tiller to go break up soil effectively. However, if soil is rock hard, due to vehicular traffic, rocks, horses et cetera even the mightiest of tillers will bounce.

On ground that was a garden the year before, that et cetera would even include human foot traffic from planting, weeding, harvesting. And even if that's kept to a minimum, a rainy year the year before will do it all by itself. Actually, I find that tilling "virgin" ground, no matter what the implement, can be easier than trying to till up a patch that was compacted the year before, for whatever reason. But of course, it still depends on soil type, as well.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

You must not get around much. We don’t all live in areas with glacial till soils that you can turn with a plastic spoon.

And we all don't live in the artic with tundra, nor do we all live on a volcano with lava, to till.

I have tilled literally thousands of acres in more than one state, so unlike most post here, I'm not just repeating what I was told, or read in some other post, on TBN.

How about you?

SR

 

[dtesmer]

My deer plot which had not been farmed for about 20 years. Sprayed roundup to brown everything down, then plowed it with a two bottom plow (first pic). When went in with my 6 foot King Kutter tiller after that (second pic). Slip clutch never slipped though i was tilling as deep as I could. Good luck with your project!!

 

[Bill Guenthner]

My deer plot which had not been farmed for about 20 years. Sprayed roundup to brown everything down, then plowed it with a two bottom plow (first pic). When went in with my 6 foot King Kutter tiller after that (second pic). Slip clutch never slipped though i was tilling as deep as I could. Good luck with your project!!

Pretty black soil. I wish I had a spot like that for my “human plot”

 

[priberc]

IMO 6" tillers and 48hp are not compatible. I have 70PTO hp and a 5' Howard when used renovate some fields that were starting to grow willow it was 110% of what the tractor was capable of. Plow it first if you can or be pre pared to go over it 6+ times

 

[tjandrews]

And we all don't live in the artic with tundra, nor do we all live on a volcano with lava, to till.

I have tilled literally thousands of acres in more than one state, so unlike most post here, I'm not just repeating what I was told, or read in some other post, on TBN.

How about you?

SR

With great respect for your obviously superior experience, my posts are coming from MY experience of 60 years farming on MY ancestral 200 acre home farm. I do live on glacial till, on the top of a drumlin, but I have at least ten different soil types on those acres, and each one acts differently when tilled OR plowed. And each one acts differently depending on what was on the field the year before, what the weather was the year before, and the weather so far this year.

Just yesterday I was moldboard plowing a field that had crops on it the year before, 1/2 oats, the other half Indian corn. We had a wet year last year, and a relatively warm winter. It's been dry lately. The half that was oats was relatively easy to plow, and MY tiller probably could have worked OK without plowing first if that had been what I wanted to do. The corn plot is a different story. The steeper slopes on that part, coupled with compaction from last year made it difficult to keep the plow in the ground in some spots. The tiller would barely have scratched it.

Of course, I don't have your obviously superior expertise.

 

[Fielding]

IMO 6" tillers and 48hp are not compatible. I have 70PTO hp and a 5' Howard when used renovate some fields that were starting to grow willow it was 110% of what the tractor was capable of. Plow it first if you can or be pre pared to go over it 6+ times

I have 30hp at the PTO, on 6. Not an issue if you rip the grass with a subsoiler first. The Hydro lets you creep along at about 1km/h so its done in one pass to full depth.

I think the biggest mistake with a rototiller is just trying to go too fast.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

With great respect for your obviously superior experience, my posts are coming from MY experience of 60 years farming on MY ancestral 200 acre home farm.

Of course, I don't have your obviously superior expertise.

I'm farming MY ancestral home farm, of more than 60 years in our family, but I took a few years off, so you got me there! lol lol

I started commercial tilling in the early 80's, when I bought my first Howard, I have three Howards now, so in more than 40 years of commercial tilling I have learned a few things.

I do have other tillers too...

SR

 

[Complete Turf Care]

To me, the most interesting thing about this thread is that many of the replies are from members who have less than 100 posts here. And many are less than 10 posts.

I wonder why that is.... That seems to be rare.

 

[lman]

IMO 6" tillers and 48hp are not compatible. I have 70PTO hp and a 5' Howard when used renovate some fields that were starting to grow willow it was 110% of what the tractor was capable of. Plow it first if you can or be pre pared to go over it 6+ times

I've always used a tiller that would cover all of the tractor tracks. Your setup will not till up your tractor tracks.

 

[Rockbadchild]

I am in the opinion of moldboard plowing your area before tilling I am sure it can be done without plowing but not in every soil type, I think tilling without plowing in most cases is a good way to beat up your equipment's you don't know what you are going to hit, but good if you can get away with it.

Are we playing who as the most experience ??

 

[priberc]

I have 30hp at the PTO, on 6. Not an issue if you rip the grass with a subsoiler first. The Hydro lets you creep along at about 1km/h so its done in one pass to full depth.

I think the biggest mistake with a rototiller is just trying to go too fast.

Must be different/much much more sandy ground that what I have here. Lowest gear is the lowest gear....can't go any slower than that

 

[Sawyer Rob]

You don't have the same soil type I do, that's obvious. Or the same tiller. My tiller has shoes on either side to set the digging depth. Maximum is about 3-4 inches. If I were foolish enough to take them off, then the side gearbox would give me maybe another inch before bottoming out.

I'm fine with that. Digging down an acre about four inches in one pass with a tiller would take 2-3 days on my soils. But I don't need my tiller to go that deep - that's why I still own my grandfather's 2-bottom plow and tractor.

The pict. I posted wasn't from my farm, so how do you know what soil I have?

Two of my Howards also have "shoes" on either side, the third has wheels. I have all of them set to till as deep as they will allow, and that's 7 to 8" deep.

I wouldn't want to till less deep, as all I'd do is get complaints from my customers, as most got rid of their plows ect. once they saw how well my tillers work their soil.

All of the fields I till are 20 acres or less, so a tiller is a good match for these smaller fields.

SR

 

[mudking]

IMO Rotary-Tillers are and always have been a very poor soil-prep device that should have gone away years ago. They kill your worm bed and chop the soil into too fine of a consistency. My home-garden plot, (apx 40 feet by 60 feet), gets moldboard/bottom-plowed every three or four years just to turn it. Every Fall I rip it once and and Spring I hit it several passes with a chisel plow: (Fred Cain 13 shank Cultivator/Ripper/Tillage Tool, what ever you want to call it...) and that's it. It's the ticket for the proper consistency, moisture retention, and erosion control.

I also no-till/drill soybeans on several hundred acres that haven't been plowed for decades. I'm in rocky clay-ish soil in the Appalachian foothills of NC.