rotary harrow

how many people use a rotary harrow and how do they work?

Depends, we have an old implement grandpa calls a 'rotary hoe' that I imagine is fairly similar (if not the same) that I pull behind the old AC WD. It's about 6' long, is made up of two sections, and it does a pretty nice job of breaking up clods or ripping down pasture. Just don't take it over cut grass or it will ball up. There's an art to turning it to make it dig into the soil. I've used it as a way to level up dirt when I didn't have access to a disc or some other item of that nature.

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It also doubles as a way to aireate the soil, too. Just gotta go semi-slow otherwise it can spin up dirt pretty well. I've drug it across the back yard a couple of times in the country; does it some good, I think.

Take a look at the photos below of our 7ft. JD Rotary Hoe.

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Maybe some day it will be used to aerate our fields.

The photo below is our 14ft. JD Rotary Hoe.

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Maybe some day it will also be used to aerate our fields.

Previous owner, Sam Adams, said it was also really handy for picking up paper trash on the right-of-way next to the road.

Before the advent of chemical weed control rotary hoes were a good way to control small weeds in corn. We saved at least one very slow tedious cultivation with our rotary hoe. You can cover a lot more ground at 7-9 mph than you can at 1-1/2 mph. Also very good for breaking up a crust in soybeans if we got a heavy rain after planting. Don't see them used much anymore.
Paul

We used one on 400+ acres of Corn and beans this spring. Many people around us dug theirs out and needed to use it as well. The situation was this: many (and us) were planting like crazy, it rained 4 or more inches in a day or two and then it turned dry and the top was hard as a rock. That hoe opens the top and at least makes holes for cracks to develop from one hole to another. Then the new plant can poke through. Saved our behind this year. We usually hoe all the corn. We don"t usually do the beans.

It seems that every one here is confusing a rotary harrow with a rotary hoe, big difference. The rotary harrows I have seen are a spike tooth type on a big (about 10' diameter pipe ring, wheel rim) and on that ring there are multiple spokes to a center hub and on each spoke there are spike tooth harrow teeth set at an angle like you would have in a regular spike tooth harrow. Those bars go to a center hub that is fastened to a 3 point hitch mounting frame. When the harrow is pulled the angle of the teeth cause the complete wheel to rotate and in rotating the teeth will cut in the soil in all directions and make a very fine seed bed, worked up as good as a disk or field cultivator would do, perhaps even finer. Could be a one time over tool to use on plowed fields before planting. Field must be clean tho with no trash. They would require a lot of HP tho. Some instead of relying on the action of the teeth to rotate the big harrow wheel were made that the PTO of the tractor caused the rotation of the wheel. Were not very popular. A neighbor had the ground drive model laying in his junk row for many a year and it sold at his estate auction, do not know what became of it. And never seen it at work but have seen different adds for them. This is in the corn belt.

how do you cult. corn with this? doesn't seem like there is room for the rows of corn? or do u remove some theth to make room?