What is your soil like? is it heavy clay, sandy loam, etc. The heavier the soil the more power to pull. For more than 50 years I have tried almost every type of tillage implement one can imagine. Both farming for a living and maintaining a family garden. Most farmers in this region (central Virginia) no longer plow with moldboard plows due to cost and erosion risks. I do see them using subsoilers to break up the soil deeply and eliminate compaction. We have a heavy red clay soil on our farm and when farming with a three crop rotation (corn, small grain, hay) the land would be plowed every three years after the last hay crop was harvested in the fall. Since a lot of organic matter was being added we always would try to plow sufficiently deep to bring up about an inch of sub soil to mix with the sod. Over time this led to the topsoil depth increasing. The land was strip farmed to minimize erosion. A disc plow would not work well on our land. I have found that subsoiling the land and then running a 7 shank tiller/cultivator will leave the land in good condition for our winter freeze thaw cycles and allow a lot of moisture to go deep into the soil. And in the spring I may only have to use a rototiller to leave the seedbed ready for planting. Some times I will use a moldboard plow in the fall on our garden after subsoiling, other times the 7 shank tiller. Both work well. If there is repeated use of a mold board plow at the same depth, then it is very easy to develop a compaction layer that limits plant growth. Hence the value of subsoiling. Subsoiling WILL]bring up a lot of rocks and it is easy to hang ups on roots if the ground has not been previously worked. You have a lot of options that have been mentioned, but your specific soil conditions are the best determining factor for which implements to use. W. Jones
