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Post by templeton on Apr 28, 2014 7:51:30 GMT -5
One of the owners of my second garden has offered me a 50 metre X 25 metre paddock which is pretty hard baked clay at the moment. I'm tossing up whether to take up the offer, and was wondering whether a hired rotary hoe would be sufficiently powerful to prepare the soil. $150 per day. 16 hp I think. "Both units have depth control lever arm & pin. Come on their own trailers. Tiller has forward control only and is not self propelled. The larger rotary hoe is self propelled and fully hydraulic operated " tills 100mm deep per pass.
Any advice/experience?
ps I'm half hoping that taking up the offer might cure me once and for all of my grandiose garden ideas:) T
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Post by MikeH on Apr 28, 2014 8:15:22 GMT -5
Hmmmmm. Let's say that you can rototill the soil. Then what? Is it likely to revert to a compacted state? I'm wondering if you'll need to improve tilth a lot by adding organic matter or grow a some green manures - peas, buckwheat, alfalfa, Daikon radish - and till them in.
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Post by steev on Apr 28, 2014 10:02:32 GMT -5
If it's baked dry, it would be a horrible dust storm to work up.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Apr 28, 2014 14:36:04 GMT -5
I think what you are calling a rotary hoe is what we would call a rototiller? In general, walk behind rototillers are horrible implements for primary tillage. They do a very poor job and BEAT THE HELL out of the operator doing it. Especially in hard dry soil, rocky soil, or established sod, you will have trouble getting the tiller to bite in, it will bounce out constantly and slap you around, wear a mouthpiece (only sort of joking). Tractor mounted units have a lot more power and can be used more effectively for that purpose.
Tillers are hard to use in clay in general, and its really easy to create a doozy of a hard-pan at the max tine depth.
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Post by 12540dumont on Apr 28, 2014 14:53:49 GMT -5
I mostly agree with Oxbow. I have sections of the farm that are clay. My advice is that if you going to till it, get the self-propelled! Wear ear and eye protection! If there's any possibility of irrigating it prior to tilling, by all means you will be much more happy with the results.
Otherwise, find someone with a tractor to rip and cultivate, while standing by with a cold beer in one hand. As we had no fall rain, I didn't till. Now the weeds are almost as tall as I am, so I'm seeing if I can kill myself by mowing and then rototilling. I hate mowing as much as I hate vacuuming. There's always a cord, or an earring that gets into the chop/suck. Fie on all of it. Anything without reverse is not worth using. Yeah, about that hill, the Howard Rotovator, and the fence....it was ugly. None of us were ever the same again. Even on the flats, reverse is something I use/need. Have I cured you yet?
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Post by richardw on Apr 28, 2014 15:03:01 GMT -5
I agree with Ox that a tractor mounted unit would be far easier to start off with,even better would be to ripe it with a subsoiler en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsoiler thus breaking up the clay pan
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Post by steev on Apr 28, 2014 15:32:04 GMT -5
Start a rumor that you've found opals on the site, but have to go away for a couple weeks before you can start working the find.
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Post by templeton on Apr 28, 2014 17:10:38 GMT -5
Thanks all for your responses. Rumor has it that the site was a chinese market garden many years ago. It was worked up a few years ago for a green manure crop. It had a horse on it for a couple of years but has been fallow for the last 2, apart from some roos coming out to graze on it at night. The Hmong community have a thriving one season old garden about 1 km away, on the same soil, which is encouraging. The soil is not brick clay, and works up pretty well with a bit of moisture, but its hard as rocks at the moment, still waiting on a proper autumn break. Mike, the plan was to add lots of stable manure, we have a racecourse nearby, and access to lots of free manure if we want to cart it away. And cheap compost at $20 per metre cubed. A cover crop is a good idea. I don't want this for fiddly little crops - I was thinking a corn patch, and a squash patch, and maybe a melon patch, tho the corn might be problematic given the roos in the local forest. I really just want more room to play with crops that I can't grow at the moment. I would either have to put sprinklers on it or wait for rain to work it. It is right next to the irrigation dam, so water is handy. Oxbow and Richard, a tractor is another option that I will give thought to. But I do like the idea of just going to the hire shop when the day is right and getting into it. Tractor access, negotiating with owners (one keen, the other not so), finding a tractor guy...all issues. Hadn't thought of the hardpan issue. Hmmm. And after speaking to the hire guy, the hydraulic with reverse was the plan, Holly. You confirm that idea. Steev, we are a bit out of opal territory, but gold, now you're talking Wikipedia "...Until overtaken in the 1890s by the Western Australia goldfields, Bendigo was the most productive Australian gold area, with a total production of over 20 million ounces (622 tonnes). Over the 100-odd year period from 1851 to 1954 the 3,600 hectare area which made up the Bendigo gold field yielded 25 miilion ounces (777 tonnes) of gold.[8] There is a large amount of gold still in the Bendigo goldfields, estimated to be at least as much again as what has been removed. ..." I'll give it some more thought - this might be over-indulgence. T.
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Post by zeedman on Apr 28, 2014 17:28:24 GMT -5
Ditto on the use of a tractor-mounted tiller, or if a walk-behind will be used, get someone to break the soil first with heavier equipment. I've had a couple self-propelled walk-behind tillers (one of which I've had for 28 years) and they are a blessing for working medium-large plots, or ground which has previously been worked. They are NOT good for breaking sod or hard ground. I did break ground with one for quite a few years, but that when I was young & still healed quickly. When the tines dig in, it doesn't matter what your wheel speed is - the tiller lunges forward, and your reflex is to hang on, and be taken for a ride. Whole-body whiplash. If you lose control, that ride might end up with you & the tiller in someone else's plot... or tearing up landscaping. Been there, done that, wish that tiller had a dead man switch. Sound like what you went through, Holly?
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Post by flowerweaver on Apr 28, 2014 20:09:47 GMT -5
We rented a very powerful rototiller this winter and broke our new fields in virgin soil made of a lot of alluvial gravel and silt (there wasn't much plant life). We took it slow and made many passes to get to a decent depth and are happy with the results.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Apr 28, 2014 20:32:10 GMT -5
We rented a very powerful rototiller this winter and broke our new fields in virgin soil made of a lot of alluvial gravel and silt (there wasn't much plant life). We took it slow and made many passes to get to a decent depth and are happy with the results. You CAN do primary tillage with a walk behind. Lots of small gardens get opened up with tillers, but it is not what they are designed for, and it takes many passes to get a decent depth and completeness of till. I have a pretty nice BCS, and I don't do primary tillage with the rototiller attachment. I used to arrange for a neighbor to tractor plow any new ground, now I use my rotary plow. The problem is weight. Walk behind tillers don't weigh enough to counteract the torque of the tiller biting into hard soils, so the tiller rides on the surface and tine-walks away from you. Tractor mounted tillers have more than enough mass to hold the tiller in the ground against the torque. I second the notion of getting the area chiseled or something before trying to till it.
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Post by steev on Apr 28, 2014 21:22:35 GMT -5
Watered, chiseled, manured, tilled, and planted; that'll do it. I break new ground with my BCS, but only after it's been thickly mulched and wet for months and only in multiple, shallow passes. Dry, unamended soil is a nightmare to till.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 28, 2014 23:25:42 GMT -5
I really dislike the Sears Craftsman tiller with reverse tine motion for cultivating because I feel like it works against itself too much and it is geared too slow for my liking, even though I changed the gear ratio to move faster. However, the reverse tine motion does a fabulous job breaking up sod, as long as it has been mowed well ahead of time. It does poorly in rocky soil. Normally I break up new fields with a 55HP tractor with tiller behind it.
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