What attachment might be best to use?

[wirlybird]

Hi all,
I have a brush hog customer with a newly purchased 3 acre "lot".
I mowed it the other day and it is extremely rough with large ruts and dirt piles from a forestry mulcher that was apparently in there when the ground was very soft. Really tore it up.

I am wondering what a good attachment might be to use to just try to smooth it out a bit. I was thinking a smaller disk for my 3038E might do ok. I just would like to kind of smooth it just a bit to make brush hogging a little less difficult.
It is too rough, too many ruts etc., for a box blade or rear blade I think.

Thanks for any ideas.

 

[i7win7]

Recommend a drawbar implement, stays on the ground as tractor bounces over ruts. Old fashion disk would smooth out plowed fields (old school farming tools)

some newer fancier stuff

Hoelscher Commercial Products

Hoelscher is a Bushton, Kansas hay baling equipment and earth moving equipment manufacturer.

www.hoelscherinc.com

 

[oosik]

I would recommend something like a land plane grading scraper.

 

[jeff9366]

I recommend a land plane grading scraper.

.....Assuming your three acres are at or near the bare dirt stage.
The key metric is weight per unit of width. Buy heavy.

VIDEOS:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=LPGS+Land+Plane

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=LPGS+Land+Plane+smoothing+field

I was thinking a smaller disk for my 3038E might do ok.

A light disk is useless. A light disk will not penetrate. It will just roll along the surface.

 

[Thomas]

Rear rake with drop down grader blade.

 

[rScotty]

Rear rake with drop down grader blade.

That's what I use. Lightweight is the downside. It is a 3pt rear rake with drop down grader blade, has blade end caps on swivels, and two adjustable height trailing wheels. Very handy for some tasks - useless for others.

I loaned it to a friend to do his horse corrals and he didn't think it did what he wanted. I have found it is better for maintaining a dirt driveway than on any other surface so far. It isn't heavy enough or sturdy enough to actually construct a dirt driveway.
rScotty

 

[Egon]

What was the forestry mulching?

 

[rScotty]

What was the forestry mulching?

I'd like to hear more about the mulching, too. We don't do that where I live. Things grow slowly in the rocky mountains. We put in roads with a bulldozer - a process that exposes raw ground with the expectation that the road will simply stay unchanged until slowly erased by the erosion of wind and weather.
rScotty

 

[wirlybird]

Recommend a drawbar implement, stays on the ground as tractor bounces over ruts. Old fashion disk would smooth out plowed fields (old school farming tools)

some newer fancier stuff

Hoelscher Commercial Products

Hoelscher is a Bushton, Kansas hay baling equipment and earth moving equipment manufacturer.

www.hoelscherinc.com

Draw bar is a good ide. Didn't think of that but tractor bouncing around is part of the problem.

 

[wirlybird]

I would recommend something like a land plane grading scraper.

Tractor is bouncing around too much. Things like that or a box blade won't stay on the ground for a second! Surface is too uneven.

 

[Slowpoke Slim]

I would look to use a heavy drag type harrow of some kind.

Chain (as in "chain harrow"), or a large railroad tie pulled along by a chain coming off each end, and pin that to your draw bar and drag the field with it. The more passes you make, the better it will get.

The heavier, the better. But a heavy weight chain harrow would probably do the job. If you look up "chain harrows" on the 'net, you should see what they look like. An 8' or 10' wide heavy duty chain harrow won't be "super cheap", but cheaper than a disk, or plow-then-disk.

 

[Rustyiron]

Half a day with a SS and a good operator.
The root mass of what you're mowing is going to be difficult to deal with for lighter tillage implements. If you're not concerned with spending a couple grand and are "building" your collection of tractor tools, as others have suggested a good (heavy) land plane will do it also.
Dry conditions will be an advantage to help separate the dirt from the grasses roots.