Southern Pa. | paul the original - 9/28/2015 21:21
You folk must not have ground squirrel, pocket gophers, badgers, and other critters?
After 5-6 years its about impossible to mow and bale a field on the bumps and holes. Can't stay in the tractor seat.
I have no idea how notill can work on row crops, it sure couldn't in alfalfa around here. I would think your row crop fields would get terribly bumpy and hole filled. There is no notill around here.....
I just mowed and mostly baled an acre of grass pasture in my neighbors pasture. The safety latch popped 6-7 times, there are areas the grass isn't really cut because the disc mower flew up so high over mounds. And I was driving about what I used to with a sickle mower, very slow. My bale basket didnt feed right spit out several bales and jammed because of the rough ground. I won't do that again next year, unless he lets me rework that patch and get it level. Its not worth it. I'll wreck something.
It has to be different 'there' than it is here, because one couldn't possibly plant into the rough stuff one gets in 5 years or so 'here'.
I just worked up a 1/4 mile grass field road, the gophers and whatever is making the large open holes made it impossible to go with a loaded wagon. I ran the field cultivator over it one day, that scuffed up the green grass, slightly leveled some mounds. The next day I took the soil saver disk chisel and made 2 passes. Really worked it up nice.
Followed that with 2 passes with the field cultivator, and made a real nice level seed bed. Hope the soil saver points went deep enough to take out most of the old tunnels, so the critters have to start out fresh again.....
Paul
It's always interesting to hear how much different things are in other areas.l can't imagine a hay field that rough. Here, (South central Pennsylvania) we generally put a qt.of Round up and 1 pt. of 2,4D on in the fall and go to corn in the spring. Or sometimes we take a cutting in early May, plant Roundup ready corn, and deal with it later. Fall killed sods make a beautiful mellow field to notill in the spring.I have fields that haven't been touched with tillage of any kind for 20 plus years.l can drive 15 m.p.h. through those fields with no problem, just need to keep an eye out for an occasional ground hog hole. We generally take the skid loader and smooth out the occasional ground hog hole before planting a field to hay, and occasionally other times if needed. I do religiously plant cover crops on any ground that has no hay or small grain crop on it, so as to have no open ground over winter.It also has to be an emergency situation before we would run over a field that is to wet to plant with harvesting equipment. I personally own no tillage equipment of any sort, except for the Rototiller my wife uses in the garden. I am always amazed at the amount of tillage work I see being done in the corn belt every time I take a drive through the Midwest. I definitely realize different areas have different needs, just can't help wondering if it's really all necessary.Saw a farmer deep ripping a freshly harvested soybean field in South west Ohio about a week ago.Around here that would be a great field to notill corn into next spring.There must be a good reason for it, as tillage is time consuming, and not exactly cheap, either. But, as the old saying goes, whatever floats your boat!
Good luck!
Edited by JD 9400 9/29/2015 00:25
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what is your favorite tool to break hay ground
