Anyone Plow With A Double Middle Buster?

[Big Barn]

This is a 45 year old pecan orchard with 850 foot irrigated rows 50 feet apart. Over the years the 50 foot open areas between each row of pecans has become uneven, slightly rutted and full of small divits where mowing has become tiresome bouncing up and down while mowing. The orchard is in the front of our property and folks drive through it to get to our house so I keep it more "park like" and manicured. From everyone's posts I gather my offset disc harrow weighted down might do the job quite well without plowing first. My new tractor.....T4.75.... Weighs considerably more than my other tractors and has a air ride seat so it will probably do just fine as far as ride. The problem with buying a new tractor in the Winter is that I do not have much to use it for right now whereas in the warmer parts of the year I'll add about 250 hours to the meter each year. I only need to break the soil up about 3" down and then smooth out so maybe the plow would be a bit extreme.

Although you have a 'heavy ' enough tractor, an offset disc or disc harrow may not penetrate the sod. You may need to use a chisel plow or tiller first followed by discing to get the levelling effect.

Terry

 

[sixdogs]

With such shallow topsoil and only a desire to smooth it a little, borrow a big rototiller and use the lowest gear two passes with the lid down. Let it get rained on afterwards to settle it down and then pack and seed it. Do it right and smooth as glass.

 

[Poopdeck Pappy]

Utopia, that offset disc you have is certainly where I'd start. An offset disc will cut MUCH more aggressively than a tandem disc, and if you only need to go 3" - 4" deep that should be a cakewalk for that disc.

You might want to go over it twice just to really disc it up good and level it out a little better. Followed up by a drag harrow, I suspect you would be pretty happy with the results.