Sappling root clearing

I am starting a 600 acre clearing job which consists mostly of pulling scattered small cedars, roots and all, with my skidder and shear for a local farmer to grow organic grain for a West Texas dairy farmer, so no chemicals are to be used. There are several acres of doghair thick small elm, hackberry, pecan and honey locusts which will eventually need to be cleared. They are too small and thick for grubbing with a dozer and a root plow leaves the stump on top. I have thought about a Rome disc plow but few are available and I'm not sure they would pulverize roots enough for planting. My question is, has anyone tried shredding or grinding down to ground level, then using a road reclaimer/mixer/soil stabilizer to grind roots and residue down 6-10". I have worked on and around them on highway construction and they look like they might work, and there are machines or contractors available. Any thoughts or alternative suggestions I can offer him?

Yair . . . Guday wrwtexan Without seeing the country its hard to say say but over here in Oz we would probably rattle over that first with with about a twenty to thirty foot rake and cutter bar the thick stuff and stumps as we went.

The piles are burnt and raked out and the patch could then be worked up with a set of heavy off-sets or a one way ... you would need a bit moisture. Idealy it would all be cutter-barred or blade ploughed but it costs big money to go the full Monte

It would be finished off with a pass with one of these http://www.multifarmingsystems.com.au/rake.php and then another pass with the pin-wheel after a working with the farmers chosen tool.

Cheers.

Some of that stuff you mentioned will root sprout. If you do anything besides grubbing or root plowing, some of that will re-sprout. If they planted wheat behind it, they would have to come out with a saw every year and cut sprouts to make way for a combine. Combines and tree saplings don't mix.

How well I know... Honey Locust, Elm, Hackberry, Pecan,. Only cedars won't come back after cutting or removal. I recommend my customers spray regrowth with Remedy or Tordon but this farmer is going "organic" so no chemicals. Not sure what to tell them. I don't have equipment big or rugged enough to deal with what I can't pull, and my eperience is a dozer will just make a glorious mess with the small stuff.

Short version, There are nonselective organic herbicides. do they work? not well but it makes people feel good.


Grumpy farmer version. Since your in texas things may be different down there. The term 'organic' doesn't mean herbicide or chemical free. It means that the chemicals that you are allowed to use must be naturally sourced product. As an example, if you squeeze a snake and get an oily product, that snake oil could be used as an organic herbicide. How ever if you were to add a man made substance to that product you couldn't sell it as organic. There are several 'organic' non selective herbicides that are available. In my professional opinion, I'm a farmer, the organic products aren't much better than snake oil, and because they are organic they don't fall into the same regulation guidelines that conventional products do the exact impact on the environment isn't know. Some studies show that organic products are more harmful to the environment than conventional chemicals. This is mostly due to the fact that the organic's aren't as potent and require many more applications to do the same job as one application of a conventional product. I'll stop my rant here. I could go on for days about how the entire organic movement was started and continues to be supported by a group of self righteous feel good hippies who think they are actually doing something good for them selves and the environment. When actually the whole organic movement is really a farce, and is actually worse for the environment and doesn't produce near the quality or quantity that modern farmers do.

Personally I'd tell them to apply the tordon or remedy, and wait the 4 years it takes to get the organic certification. Trees and crap like that aren't friendly to any ag equipment. Or they could use a product like AXXE or Interceptor, which is an organic certified product, in canada that is, and when no one is looking they could add some tordon, remedy, round up, grazeon or restore.

Yair . . . We have a problem with several native species and they tend to thin out a bit after a couple of workings with one of these . . . cheaper than a blade plough per acre but still expensive.

http://www.savannahequipment.com.au/cgiscripts/TDGdisplayframese73a.html?display=x9111

Cheers.

Is the soil very rocky? If not use a old vee blade of a kg blade on your dozer then rake and burn. The vee blade if run right will cut even the smallest stuff and also take down the largest trees. That is what the hardwood forrest of the Mississippi Delta was cleared with.
http://www.romeplow.com/KG and VEE Blades.htm
Just put this link up for pictures, I heard the new vee blades cost 40,000 but the old ones that haven't been cut up for scrap are anywhere from 1,000 to 8,500 depending on how lucky you are in finding one. You can do more google searches to find more pictures. I'm clearing up about 40 acres of ground with a D6C that was logged about 10 years ago and has lots of saplings and the old timber that wasn't good enought to make logs.
It runs just under the ground and slices, you run it in float position.

Soil type is Blackland gumbo, no rocks. Sticky as chewing gum when wet and highly resistant to heavy working. I am thinking like farmerleach and suggest cutting, spraying with something that will actually work, keep it clear for the required time and then go the "organic" route.

Scrub Puller, wow that is some plow. Some of the equipment ya'll have on the far side of the world is really interesting. Why it hasn't made its way up here I don't know as they might work really well. We may not have enough fallow ground left for there to be much of a market. Cropland Reserve land is about all around me that could use something like that. Grain prices are good and some of this land is being put back into production.

Yair . . . wrwtexan Those ploughs are an impressive bit of gear. I have never pulled one but have done a fair bit of work with two modified five disk Shearer Majestics behind a D7 . . . I think they had 42" disks

We also trialed a Towner Armstrong offset with 48" discs behind a D8. It worked but was heavy and even back in the Sixty's the cost was seen as being too high to go contracting.

Very little of Australia was open country and I believe from (say) the early Sixty's to the late ninety's over a million acres were cleared here every year. Most of out native species are prone to "suckering" and consiquently a variety of specialised equipment has evolved to control "regrowth"

As the cost of fuel increases it seems inevitable that much of this country will revert back to timber as it will not be possible to get an adequate return from the land to finance on going maintainance . . . more particularly with grazing as the price obtained for cattle is not keeping up with input costs.

Cheers

Were in the process of testing a Cat reclaimer on field prep. We worked it about a month b4 the ground froze here. One thing we found is the long skinny roots,, say the ones about a half inch in diameter would not grind.. they would pass through between the teeth coming out the same length. Stump's it chewed pretty well, but would have the occasional one flip up to the top and lay there. We ground to a depth of 16 inches. All in all it worked pretty well, but the drum needs a different pattern to the teeth and also closer tolerance's in the teeth and cutter bar's... will continue in the spring after some winter modification's.... 150k is a pretty spendy experiment but the landowner think its the cat's behind.... time will tell... Gramps.

Yair . . .

We're in the process of testing a Cat reclaimer on field prep.

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grandpa I would love to see some pictures of that machine . . . and the field after a pass.

I imagine it must be high value country to justify the expence . . . any idea of cost per acre and what are the crops?

I can't imagine having to deal with frozen ground.

Cheers

A Vee Blade and a rake blade followed by a new ground disk will work for you.

Jedstivers said:

A Vee Blade and a rake blade followed by a new ground disk will work for you.

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+1.

Check out a Seppi Starsoil 250. It will subsurface to 16", crush rocks, mulch stumps and organics. It does what the reclaimer you speak of does but it is designed for all of the above.