Smoothing Land

[oosik]

What jeff9366 said. I will do any and all disking this time of year or just before freeze up in the fall. My disk harrow - Land Pride 1048 - is a left over from when I had a much smaller tractor. I've pulled it with my new tractor and an extra 400 lb cement block on the disk and barely scratched the ground when it dry here. I do not know cedar roots either, but from experience with ponderosa pine roots the disk harrow will not cut them. And on top of that my single bottom plow - a lot of times - gets really hung up on the roots. My answer has been to let them age & mature in the ground (i.e.-let them rot) before attacking with any ground engagement implement. i break my ground best - spring, summer or fall - when I turn it with the bottom plow and follow with the disk harrow. Beyond the disk harrow depends upon what I'm going to do with it. I have a roll over box blade to move dirt around, a grading scraper to level and further refine the soil and a home made spike drag harrow to turn it back to dust, if necessary.

 

[The Griff]

Jeff, thanks for the info! It is approximately 3 acres. Most of the land will probably be used for pasture but for now I just want some decent looking grass. About 1/4 acre of the will be a house and yard.

I don't know for sure but I don't think the cedar roots will sprout trees but I'll need to check on that.

oosik, how long should I leave them to rot?

 

[oosik]

Griff,
I think it has a lot to do with ground moisture, wet,dry cycles and a lot of magic, ha,ha. I would try after one year and thereafter every year. I live in an area called cold semi-arid (around 15" of moisture per year) and most all of my stumps and roots are completely rotted within four years. However, I can easily rip most - except the really big pines, bigger than 24" dia on the base - out with the shanks on my roll over box blade at two years. I do a lot of thinning of small pines ( average 500-750 annually) every year to maintain a healthy stock. I seldom worry about the stumps from the thinned trees because they will be gone in a couple years anyhow. The only trees I have here are Ponderosa pine - a quite soft wood. Down the way there is an old grove of black locust - probably from some old homestead planting. About half of them were dead when I moved down here from Alaska in 1982. The majority of the dead ones are still standing after at least thirty two years.
A friend gave a small bucket of "stump rot", I mixed it all and poured it on some of the bigger stumps after I bored multiple holes in each. The stumps are still there - I don't think it did a darn bit of good. What really helps is the badgers & coyotes that dig around the stumps and expose the roots. Now those big stumps go rotten quite soon. Its a very moving thing to see - not moving enough to get me to dig around all the remaining big stumps though.