Wear and Tear on Tractor - Tiller or Plow?

[Scooter123]

I am not very experienced but I had 3 acres covered with saplings and blackberry vines. Brush hog then potato plow (cheap and deeper and easy for an amateur ) did a nice job. Then tilled after bigger roots out

 

[vtsnowedin]

I'm in an entirely different climate and soil type so I'm confused. I don't even know what a sweet gum looks like. But how do they get to 1 to 2 inches if they have been mowed or brush hogged every year? Here the fastest growing tree is the poplar which can have a shoot as tall as the grass it is growing in in August so five to six feet in fertile ground and if you skip a few years you can have twenty foot trees with four inch diameter trunks at the base, but if you mow it once a year you would never have anything thicker then your thumb. It does help to mow after the spring growth is about over and the dry heat of late July through August keeps the cut off stumps from re-sprouting. Cut it too early and every stump puts up half a dozen replacement shoots.
Once you have it mowed tight and dried out late August I'd turn it upside down with a moldboard plow to make all the little sapling stumps have to reverse growing direction to survive. Chopping them up with a tiller leaves a certain percentage cut and pruned just right and at the perfect depth and position to re-sprout in the nice loose topsoil you left them in. Again what works in Vermont and what works in Dixie are two very different things so I'm just putting out some idle thoughts here. feel free to enlighten me.

 

[boomer613]

I'm in an entirely different climate and soil type so I'm confused. I don't even know what a sweet gum looks like. But how do they get to 1 to 2 inches if they have been mowed or brush hogged every year? Here the fastest growing tree is the poplar which can have a shoot as tall as the grass it is growing in in August so five to six feet in fertile ground and if you skip a few years you can have twenty foot trees with four inch diameter trunks at the base, but if you mow it once a year you would never have anything thicker then your thumb. It does help to mow after the spring growth is about over and the dry heat of late July through August keeps the cut off stumps from re-sprouting. Cut it too early and every stump puts up half a dozen replacement shoots.

It kind of like harvesting trees. If you chop them down and leave a stump, they'll grow back of the side of the stump faster, thinker, and taller. I bush hog them every year, and they grow from the stubs I chopped off last year. Because they already have a long root system, they grow like crazy. One of my pasture only get's bush hogged once a year, and by summer's end they are 8-10' tall.

 

[boomer613]

Not sure if this helps but I just bought a 17 acre hobby farm. I have needed a tiller twice and discs once. When I need them I can rent a tiller for $100 for the entire weekend or a big set of discs for the same. I can't justify the cost, storage, etc just to use an implement twice a year.

I can do a LOT of tilling in a weekend.


Just something to consider!!

I guess I never considered renting a tiller/plow/disk. I'll have to check into it. Thanks for the tip!

 

[tcreeley]

I have gotten rid of saplings- birch, poplar, spruce, dogwood, thorns - from 2" and down with repeated bush hogging here in Maine. The 1st chops it. It starts to recover and I hit it again. Comes back, cut again. Finally the sapling wears out- no life and starts to die. What hangs on through the winter- gets hit again the next summer. My wife rides her horse over the area - so I like it short anyway, and it looks great.

 

[vtsnowedin]

It kind of like harvesting trees. If you chop them down and leave a stump, they'll grow back of the side of the stump faster, thinker, and taller. I bush hog them every year, and they grow from the stubs I chopped off last year. Because they already have a long root system, they grow like crazy. One of my pasture only gets bush hogged once a year, and by summer's end they are 8-10' tall.

It sounds like you are doing an early spring cut when the plants have the energy and the water to regrow. Try letting them get a little taller before you first mow and snip them off just as the driest part of the summer usually comes in. What you are doing now resembles what hay farmers do buy cutting the first cut early enough to get both a second and third cut off their fields when each cut is at the top nutrient level. That is good practice for them but opposite of what you want to do which is to cut just once a year and kill as many saplings as possible when they are the most vulnerable.

 

[Smallplot]

I agree you would want to plow rather than tear up a tiller to do this. With a 40 HP tractor you will be at it for quite a while either way on this many acres. You will be limited to a single bottom plow considering the clay and root structure. From postings it sounds like the roots are gonna be what gets you! Get a plow stuck in the ground under a root and the fun begins.

 

[boggen]

if you are going to replant the area. with some sort of grass. you will have to keep up on mowing, rotatory cutter (bush hog) or other. if you do not you will be right back at it. in a couple years with more saplings.

2 times i would say min rotatory cutter. once a year. just leaves to much growth.

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i am for some sort of chemical pending on what it is. chemicals have there uses.

double check on type of tree / plant you are wanting to get rid of. some can be rather stubborn. and you may need to just get entire root ball. out of the ground and burned.

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as far as renting vs buying, plow and disc, are for most all metal. not much can go wrong with them. at most a bolt rusts up and you have to cut / grind the bolt / nut off to take it out. to fix something.

if you are wanting a nice finish land, something like a golf course smoothness. you might look into after running plow / disc. a 3pt rake or harrow. to help drag the tree root clumps out. and smooth everything out.

i have no idea how bottom plows / mold board plows are rated for size of HP of tractor / weight of tractor. but i would imagine you could get 3 or 4 bottom plow behind a 40HP tractor. assuming you can keep traction.

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tillers have there place, but tines wearing out. to needing to cut into weeds / roots. can be problematic. as stuff gets wrapped around the tines. and needing to get off tractor and spend more time cleaning out the tiller tines than actually tilling. than and the tiller tines most likely not strong enough to handle rocks to larger stumps. and twisting to breaking tines on the tiller.

plow will more likely just keep on pulling. and cause tractor to "bog down" or you loose traction and begin spinning the tires. at worst case, you are not paying attention like you should be, and get hung up on something. and bend something on the plow. same for disc. unlike a tiller, not paying attention and still take a tine or two out of commission.

 

[remington270]

I'm in an entirely different climate and soil type so I'm confused. I don't even know what a sweet gum looks like. But how do they get to 1 to 2 inches if they have been mowed or brush hogged every year?

A sweetgum is a fast growing tree that grows FAST here in Dixie. They eventually get grown over by steadier growing trees but you can get overgrown quick if they are around. It probably also helps that we have such warm growing weather.

 

[vtsnowedin]

Considering you are in the South I would modify my own advise given above to mow it twice a year at least. Once just before the dry season as stated before and again late fall after all leaves have gone dormant for the winter. That will let the grass grow in the milder part of the winter without competition from the sapling sprouts. If you till it one way or the other and reseed I would keep that same mowing schedule once the grass was up enough to take mowing.
I wouldn't consider tilling up any area bigger then a large garden but that is because my soil is about twenty percent rocks with bedrock just a couple of feet down with lots of fingers that reach up to the surface. Tiller tines take a beating on a large rock or bedrock outcrop. Even a bottom plow can take a beating if you plow at too high a speed and catch the point under a BFD rock that fetches you up short. You have to stop( before something breaks) back up until the point is out from under the rock then raise the 3PH to clear then move ahead and re-dive into the ground past the rock. Some fields you seem to spend as much time in reverse as you do forward. On the other hand I'm not stuck in the clay at least not yet.