What is a disc harrow?

Just as an example, with some looking I know for a fact I could find the old manual of the Minneapolis Moline “disc harrow”, the first ground working tool I pulled as a 8 or 9 year old kid. Sheesh that thing was old then and that was almost 50 years ago! It was about maybe 6 feet wide, no wheels, no weight to it. It wouldn’t do anything but make a clanging noise in your application. But it says “disc harrow” on that manual, I guarantee it! Others are like you say, fluted, straight, heavy, whatever.

I got a picture in my head of what you’re up against, and it might be all wrong. But I’m thinking maybe a heavy offset disc, followed by a root rake, then something to smooth things out. You’re going to have to look around and think over what you’re seeing.

since you have a Dozer, you might have more luck attaching a root rake to the blade instead of dragging something behind you....... then DISC afterwards.

Codger. We took moms farm out of CRP last year. Fsa office recommended beans the first year. This ground was some of the first to go into the program over 40 years ago. Mom had the trees dozed off and burnt. We rented it to a progressive young farmer. He came in and sprayed, then no tilled beans on 160 acres. He said he had a fantastic crop of beans. Mom limed the ground, something I would recommend you have checked out. He planted corn this year and will again next year. His corn crom started out looking great, but we sure need a good rain on it.

I've seen and helped farm recently cleared ground without digging up all the roots.

Sent you a pm

WF owner wrote: What I haven't seen said on this post, is that you will first need to (moldboard) plow the sod first, especially on old sod. If you had a very heavy offset harrow and went over it several times, you might get away with just disking, but a well worked seed bed is important when seeding legumes or grasses. Offset discs are very heavy and take a lot of power.

You wanna plow through all those roots? Even after a root rake I might not wanna. Not until they start decomposing. No thanks.

Just finished clearing a 80 acre plot and I can share my experience. You could get someone with a track hoe and pull the trees and pile they do a good job and keep dirt out of the piles so they’ll burn. When they finish pull a heavy bog type disk with a drag to fill holes and level do not be afraid to cut it several times. Then comes the fun part picking up the roots root rakes are a good tool but if you run them to low you’ll get dirt in your pile and they won’t burn skim the ground and they work good and piles will burn but unless you have a pto driven rake to windrow the roots and a pull behind loader that picks up the windrows be prepared to pick up a lot of roots
I ended up buying a D7 with a cutting blade to finish this plot of land. After cutting 40 acres we mounted a root rake on the C-frame to pile and burn worked good got corn planted on part of it this past spring. On your last pace with a disk if you can pull a culti-packer it will help push the smaller roots back into the soil so they won’t interfere with your future crop

Thanks guys. Was speaking with my uncle this afternoon and he says if I'll get an access road cut through he'll get the ground work done after the trees are removed. Another friend has an older Hein-Werner excavator and is willing to take the trees out to help me out too. If I go this route, I can see a root rake being beneficial as well as some tillage equipment to maintain and use into the future. I will also be able to use the dozer quite a bit in the project. I purchased an 8-1/4 yd dolly wheel ejector scraper for relocating some dirt to flatten off some of the ruts and falloff of the edges to reclaim more ground also. 

Edited by Codger - 24 Jun 2023 at 5:44am