What do I do next

[Gary Fowler]

Your toothbar will work fine for piling brush. You may loose a sapling under the bucket now and then and have to back up to retrieve it but they still get the job done. Once you get one or two trees collected in the bucket, they will tend to push the rest in front as long as you have the power and traction to push them. Just push them up into as big of a pile as you can then start another one.

Try to avoid trapping dirt in the pile. Go slow and watch for those stumps so that if you do accidently hang one, you are going slow enough that you wont damage your FEL.
Lay the bucket lip flat on the ground then tilt it up just slightly and it will slide over most stumps but be aware that if you tilt it too much, limbs and small trees are also going to slide under it.

By the way, I don't have a toothbar on my B26 and it does an adequate job of piling brush. My other tractor had one and it was much easier to gather up all the limbs with it.

 

[PuJo]

I should have enough power. I purchased a 2015 RX6620PS a few months ago.

I will take it slow, and try to get everything into a pile without piling too much dirt. If we don't have a wet spring, I can get it done early before the first brush hogging is due.

 

[IslandTractor]

No, you cannot.

Tooth Bar is not a substitute for a Ratchet Rake.

For $400 buy a Ratchet Rake. Fifteen acres contains a lot of debris. You will be glad you disgorged for the Ratchet Rake.

Agree. Even a grapple is no substitute for a Ratchet Rake in collecting debris (the grapple is much better at moving piles however).

If I were in the OP's shoes, I would temporarily remove the toothbar (really only useful for digging) and install a ratchet rake. I'd use the ratchet rake to scrape while driving backwards with the bucket in a mild dump orientation and with the RR tines just barely on the ground.

If I had my druthers, I'd then convert my bucket to a bucket grapple and use that to move the piles around. A regular standalone grapple is better at that task but you can have a RR mounted on a bucket grapple and the convenience of a single FEL device would trump the full grapple in this case.

I'm not so sanguine about the ability of the RR to dig out the stumps of 3" saplings. It might work but really you want to get something (like grapple tines) underneath the stump to pull up. Pulling sideways or parallel to the ground, which is all the RR can do, will work for small bushes and small sapling stumps but will likely just slip off of 3" stumps.

If you have a large area of these smallish stumps and don't expect the field to turn into a golf course green or a pasture for horses in one year, you might just consider just repeated bush hogging at a low level setting. They will die and rot eventually but you'll need to mow more than a couple times a year to hurry that process along. Depending on how heavy duty your bush hog is and how soft the saplings and branches are, you could actually avoid collecting and burning anything and just bush hog over and over. I've seen that done and have done it myself in small areas. Bush hogs in the medium and heavy duty category can make chips/mulch out of just about anything smaller than 3". Mowing over the same area about three times from different angles will mulchify nearly all the debris and regular bush hogging after that will get the rest. It may delay regrowth of grass by a season but it will keep the area clean and will take a lot less time and hassle than raking and burning.

 

[IslandTractor]

Your toothbar will work fine for piling brush. You may loose a sapling under the bucket now and then and have to back up to retrieve it but they still get the job done. Once you get one or two trees collected in the bucket, they will tend to push the rest in front as long as you have the power and traction to push them. Just push them up into as big of a pile as you can then start another one.

Try to avoid trapping dirt in the pile. Go slow and watch for those stumps so that if you do accidently hang one, you are going slow enough that you wont damage your FEL.
Lay the bucket lip flat on the ground then tilt it up just slightly and it will slide over most stumps but be aware that if you tilt it too much, limbs and small trees are also going to slide under it.

By the way, I don't have a toothbar on my B26 and it does an adequate job of piling brush. My other tractor had one and it was much easier to gather up all the limbs with it.

I've used both toothbar and ratchet rake for collecting debris. There is a big difference in efficiency. Trouble with the toothbar is that you need to keep the bucket in full dump position to keep debris from simply sliding under the toothbar tines and when that happens the bucket is raised and you lose most of your load. To keep the bucket in full dump, even in float, with the toothbar in contact with soil will almost always dig/rip sod. The ratchet rake is effective at milder angles and in float you can use the front edge to guide the bucket along the soil while the rear ratchet blades (set at 90 degrees from the front) are set an inch or so above the soil and will collect debris. I just found the RR much more effective for backwards raking.

 

[PuJo]

Wow, I didn't realize there was that much of a benefit to using the ratchet rake....
I wish I could get on now, but my priority is the set of disc. I can wait a year or 2 for the debris to rot, and I will continue cutting about once every 6 weeks or so.

Thanks,
-PuJo

 

[DaveNJ]

I'm a rachet rake convert too. Bought one about a week ago for a similar brush cleanup and it works great. In another lifetime, while just out of college, I worker for a landscaper in central Louisiana (Baton Rouge). Most of the time I ran a fairly large brush hog doing a number of commercial and development sites. I've chopped up more rabbits and rattlesnakes in a day down there than I even see in a lifetime in NJ. Not to mention the crawley critters and fire ant mounds. Brush and grass grows faster in three weeks than it does in half a season here in Jersey. Debris also rots faster so I might be tempted to follow Island Tractors advice and leave it in place for subsequent mowings.

 

[geneP]

I have moved a lot of brush with a boxblade. I have a hydraulic top link and can vary the position of the scarifiers. I drag the brush up close to the pile and then turn around and push it up into the pile.

 

[N80]

I've cleared, down to the dirt, many acres with nothing but a regular FEL bucket. Grapple would great be great but pricey. Other gadgets like the ratchet rake would be fine too but again, more money. Box blade does not work well at all. Regular 3 pt rake works great for the small stuff and I recommend one because they are versatile. Tooth bar works fine but is fiddly. However, it serves other purposes for your money. But, the bottom line is that you don't need any of this stuff for one job for which you have plenty of time. When I cleared 4 acres of 5-8" pines and brush I found a sort of ravine to push it all into, burned it and then used the box blade and bucket to push dirt on top.

 

[jeff9366]

Ok, thanks for the insight.
I am saving to purchase a set of 12-14 foot disc at the moment. It will have to wait till I get the disc first.

Please, when you are shopping Disc Harrows or writing about Tandem Disc Harrows, describe them by pan diameter, then adjustment mechanism, maybe frame dimensions, WIDTH LAST. You will make a better decision.

For your Kioti 22" to 24" pan diameters are appropriate.


LINK: http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachments/308251-disc-harrow-selection-18-45-a.html?highlight=

You are not far from Monroe Tufline, one of the best Disc Harrow manufacturers, which has a diverse offering.

LINK: Agriculture | Tufline

 

[JRobyn]

I can attest to the success of several bushhoggings to mulch your debris and then leave it to rot (assuming you are not in a hurry). And I can confirm that 15 acres of debris, even if quite thin, will make for LARGE piles and BIG fires if you spend a LOT of time collecting and piling it via just about any method.

- Jay