Need advise on small tractor disk harrow

Micheal

I think the 10 foot disk will be quite a load for your tractor, esp in fresh plowing. Eight feet or less would go ok. In many cases, faster works nicer with a disk, you don't want to bog down. Just used my 20' with a 135 hp tractor in unworked cornstalks, ran in 6th low range, was tossing dirt over it's frame, but cut nice & made a good seedbed for oats in 1 pass.

The little cheapie 3-point new ones are good for your 2-4 acres of planting, but you will cuss a lot this first year on 14 acres.... They are too light for serious work.

I'd get one big enough to cover the width of your tractor, or why bother.

If you plow, it rains in a day, and you disk 3-4 days later, it will disk much nicer. The rain will soak the clods up & melt them a bit for you. Around here (Minnesota) we plow in the fall, let winter freezing & snow melt mellow up the ground. Then any disk will work out. The spring plowing can be real tough if the weather is against you, end up with bricks & nothing helps.

Another option is an older used single 3-point disk. These are built a lot heavier, are about 12 feet wide, and go for $200 or less at auction. They only have the 2 front gangs, no rear ones. If you need full disking, you just cover 6 feet each time, it will end up doing the job of a double disk. If you just need light cover, a single pass will go pretty quick for you.

Back in '93 when it rained & rained, nothing else would move in the fields, so I did all the spring tillage on 175 acres with a 12' single disk & a Ford 960. (You don't need that much power to pull one). That was a long year.

--->Paul

I've got a 48 8N, so we're roughly in the same boat. I bought a 3 pt disk from Central Farm a couple of years ago. It has been ok for my purposes, but does have problems.

It *is* light when the soil is heavy (i.e. either too wet, or when I've just broken new sod). When this is the case and I want more weight, I tie one or two concrete blocks to it so it 'bites' a little better. It will go down to the disk hubs in any soil this way, but if the ground is soft I can't pull it that deep anyway because the tractor wheels spin. Better to take several cuts, each one a little deeper than the next. The other 'problem' is that it is narrower then the tractor, so the wheels leave markes that don't get disked over.

Wheel spin will be your problem with a bigger disk not horsepower. "Molly" (28 hp when she was new, 53 years ago) can pull anything, but traction is typically my problem not power. My guess is that progressively deeper cuts would solve that problem with a bigger disk, too, though.

good luck,
Tom