Field cultivator plugging

[T-Nason]

Hey guys,
Last year I bought a 20 glencoe C shank field cultivator with a single bar harrow on the back.
Was hoping to pull it with my 4430 directly into bean stubble. Anyways, I went in this fall and it would plug after about 50. I mean I had a mess. I currently have 8 shovels on it, all new. Do you think I should try it this spring? Maybe the frost helped break the stubble layer up some? My combine does not have a chopper. I debated smaller width shovels.

 

[T-Nason]

I mean 8 inch width shovels

 

[David from Kansas]

If you have heavy residue you are doomed with that set-up. Looks to me like your choices would be either a disk or a chisel with high clearance and shanks with points and not sweeps. JUst one person's opinion, there will probably be many. If you had used a combine with chopper it may have helped.

 

[Scott 730]

(quoted from post at 09:46:15 03/14/22)

My combine does not have a chopper.

This is your problem. Changing shovels won't fix it.

 

[NY 986]

Distance between shanks is the key in handling residue. Old designs had minimal rows of teeth with them being 12 inches or less apart. Worked fine in plowed ground where the top of the ground was clean but act like a dump rake in any quantity of trash. I doubt that smaller teeth will work for you. If you do not mind the effort and chance that it will not work you could try removing every other tooth. Maybe try a good disk chisel or soil saver with a good gang of discs on the front to break up the plant residue.

 

[T-Nason]

I used it in chisel plowed ground and it worked great.
Kinda nervous to use a disk, heard some horror stories on compaction

 

[SVcummins]

My international Harvester 45 vibra shank has the shanks so close it will almost plug up with dirt on plowed ground let alone any crop residue

 

[tomstractorsandtoys]

If your combine does not have a chopper you are going to have problems unless you move up to a newer soil finisher that has discs and the shanks spread apart. To many people use a cultivator like a chisel plow. Using a disc chisel then your cultivator might work. Tom

 

[rustred]

i dont know how thick bean stubble is but it should be chopped. so you might have to bale it dont know. other thing is you can harrow it crossways. then disc it. then use chizel spikes instead of them wide shovels. shovels dont work well with lots of trash. a disc is a good thing to have.

 

[muleman51]

If you didn't chop the bean straw and have an old style Glencoe, you will have a dump rake. We had one years ago, But that was when we black plowed every thing, then disked, then field cultivated. I have a newer DMI now and that will plug in the spring if you don't have a chopper on the combine.

 

[cjunrau]

Use a disc but use common Sense.
All those horror stories are just that,, stories.
I like a disc and run a cultivator over with 3 row mulches ASAP after disc. If in sand packers behind.

 

[Bill(Wis)]

Back when I used to hire my combining done, the combine's chopper got damaged. Rather than wait to have it fixed we combined soybeans without it. I tried discing. It was like trying to disc barbed wire. The only way I was able to handle it was to get out my green chopper which worked pretty good. The combine had left big windrows and low gear in the tractor was a little too fast to handle that much but by opening the back auger cover on the green chopper and just letting the stuff fly out the back worked pretty good. Otherwise, you'll have to wait a long, long time for that stuff to break down. I've since purchased my own combine which finely chops and distributes the bean straw. No problem for a field cultivator.

 

[BarnyardEngineering]

So what's considered "common sense" using a disc?

Common sense to me is to hook it to a tractor, take it to a field, lower it into the ground and drive forward.

Not common sense would be dragging it sideways, or flipping it upside down, or not lowering it, or using way too small of a tractor to pull it, or charging headlong into standing water with the disc sunk in to the axles....

 

[fixerupper]

Fall bean stubble plugs worse than corn stalks. Here in Iowa Bean stubble will plug even a newer field cultivator in the fall. Wait till spring and it will go right through.

 

[caterpillar guy]

By spring it will probably flow through alright. If not just chisel it or disc it. Some of the wives tales about them are just that. I think if you get one of the Deere disks with the big cone shaped blades on it they may be worse about packing. I never thought our IH disk was a problem with packing. The issue becomes the smearing of the dirt at the disc blade edge if it is wet. We use a Sunflower disc regularly with no apparent packing issue. We like it on the dry side and I try not to work ground wet.