Hey guys,
I used a Massey Ferguson 240 tractor with a disc plow on my food plots yesterday.
I will be planting a mixture of wheat, oat and winter peas.

I am located in central Texas.

I don't like how the fields turned out at all. Still a lot of crouton weed and old wheat. I'm also not happy with how deep I got. Only about 2". Any ideas and suggestions are welcome!

(sorry for the image edits, never posted one before)

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For me, I would just keep discing. Run over it two or three times. I have seen small disc plows with large rocks wired to them... years ago that is. That would work too.

Cinder Blocks

Cinder blocks and tractor weights work well? Anyone with experience using these?

You don't have any fat cousins that can surf the plow?

Build you a wire cage and fill it with rocks (or cinder blocks etc if you don't hve lots of rock)

Pull type disc or 3pt hitch disc? If pull type, just add weight to it, be sure you're not traveling too fast. If on a 3pt hitch, try lengthening the top link, add weight and keep your speed down. We'd chain old tractor weights to the lighter discs.

Weight and the angle of the blades. If you're starting with dry, hard ground, with lots of cover, you're not going to get a good result the first pass. Especially if the cover is sod.

I skipped shredding and went straight to plowing. Does that have any effect?

Like mentioned in original post, just a lot of crouton weed and some old wheat. Nothing too thick or higher than 4-8 inches.

Just know that if you only ever disc you will continue to compact that 3-4" zone since you aren't breaking through.

More weight, more passes are about all you can do, hopefully with a pull disc not 3pt (those are useless on tough ground IMO). As mentioned, set your disc gangs as aggressive as possible (steeper angle against direction of movement).

Shredding and herbicides prior will allow the blades to cut a little deeper. Wet plant tissue is very difficult for even a heavy plow to cut through. Plus you have live root systems holding soil together.

Mixing in a small trailer pull chisel type plow would help you break it up more consistently.



OR, go to a local landpride dealer or Kubota dealer and rent a 8-10' no till planter for a day. Normally have a 15-20 acre limit for about $200/day and don't plow.

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herbicides prior will allow the blades to cut a little deeper

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Wurd.

Rainfall will soften the ground some, using herbicides to stop the moisture uptake by weeds/grass will allow it to mellow. A flush of weeds or crop volunteer can turn ground into concrete quite rapidly.

What Canyon said.. weight and bite/angle of the blades.

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I skipped shredding and went straight to plowing. Does that have any effect

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Yes. The more vegetation, the more the disk will float on it rather than penetrate. Shredding would shorten and dry the stalks, allowing more penetration

The implement salesman will tell you that you need a bigger/heavier plow. And a new tractor to pull it.


We always had a rock pile at the edge of the field to pile on when needed.

We use a length of anchor chain from a ship - easier to pick up w forks.

fold up the wings if possible

Wait fer it to rain.

Ah, the vagaries of farming. My great uncle had a saying: "farming's the only enterprise I know of where a man can do everything perfectly, and still go broke!"

Yep.

Shred. Chisel. Tandem disk.

If you didn't shred or chisel, I doubt any amount of weight is gonna get you what you want.

The better the crop, the less it's worth.

How about a pair of Noble plows? Or more?



I once saw a really big set of Nobles being used in New Mexico to plow land that had never before been plowed.

Those V plows, or whatever they are called, are pretty awesome. Great for tough ground without disturbing too much surface.

When the soil moisture is right, and with enough horsepower, plows work like they're designed to work. With inadequate soil moisture, you will simply wear your plow out prematurely, while getting unsatisfactory results.

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Those V plows, or whatever they are called, are pretty awesome. Great for tough ground without disturbing too much surface.

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I've always known them as nobles.

As a kid, I spent a great many hours driving a tractor pulling them. I used to look forward to pulling tandem, offset, or one-way disks because compared to pulling nobles, disking was so much faster -- three or four times the area covered at more than two or three times the speed.

We did have one thing to break the monotony -- every few days I could watch the B-52's fly over at about 300 to 500 feet agl.

I usually chisel plow then disc. Works good on our soil

Farming is an art. Takes time/experience to master. Land that won't "take" a disk plow is not gonna take a chisel plow either. Sounds as if he's gonna hafta wait for a rain regardless of the implement he uses. Good luck! Sounds like you got a challenge.

Wait for a rain

We're waitin in the rain

If you really want to turn over the soil, then use a moldboard plow.

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If you really want to turn over the soil, then use a moldboard plow.

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I can sell you one of those.

Do you think it's time to have the disc plow vs. disc harrow conversation here or will it just confuse everyone?

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Do you think it's time to have the disc plow vs. disc harrow conversation here or will it just confuse everyone?

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Growing up, we always called it a "tandem", from "tandem disk harrow". When we bought an offset disk, we referred to it as the "offset" to differentiate.

What Eric calls Nobles, which is a brand name of a company that makes them, I simply call a "sweep plow". BTW, when it runs right, it's great, when it doesn't it's a PITA.

We used to own a type of chisel plow that had a bunch of small sweeps. Maybe 6 inch sweeps, I'm not sure of the spacing. Dad always called it a hoeme, pronounced hay-me. The inventor was the Graham-Hoeme company.

Graham-Hoemes were popular here too. We used the same terminology you did to differentiate between tandems and offsets, except the offset is often called the 'esquierda' (sp); the slang spanish word for 'square, sharp angle, crossed'.

Back in the days of drawn plows there were a lot of disc plows here though. One way tillers too (to further confuse things), but when I refer to plows I mean ones with 30+" discs and 16" cuts similar to a moldboard; pulling 2-4 depending on horsepower. Surely y'all had them there too in the sand.

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What Eric calls Nobles, which is a brand name of a company that makes them, I simply call a "sweep plow". BTW, when it runs right, it's great, when it doesn't it's a PITA.

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I may be wrong, but I think that the man who invented them was named Noble. Whether we called them that because of the name of the inventor or because of the name of the company, I have no idea.

For disk plows, there is also the one-way so-named, I think, because you could effectively turn only one way -- to the left.



I see Centerpole beat me to mentioning these.

More weight on your plow/disks. And wait about 2 more weeks on planting. It's not time just yet.

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Do you think it's time to have the disc plow vs. disc harrow conversation here or will it just confuse everyone?

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Growing up, we always called it a "tandem", from "tandem disk harrow". When we bought an offset disk, we referred to it as the "offset" to differentiate.

What Eric calls Nobles, which is a brand name of a company that makes them, I simply call a "sweep plow". BTW, when it runs right, it's great, when it doesn't it's a PITA.

We used to own a type of chisel plow that had a bunch of small sweeps. Maybe 6 inch sweeps, I'm not sure of the spacing. Dad always called it a hoeme, pronounced hay-me. The inventor was the Graham-Hoeme company.

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Tandem and Offset are different arrangement of disc gangs (groups) working off the same principle.

Tandem



Offset (best thing for breaking ground).




Deep tillage was never done with moldboard plows, we used "V Rippers. Pic below.


Sweep plow was the term I was looking for when discussing the Nobels.



We referred to these as rolling cultivators or lilliston.