I have an 8 acre field that I need to recreate from scratch, I would like to scrape off the top 6 inches of grass/roots/soil and grade the subsoil to give me the desired slope for good drainage and general workability. That done I would have many large piles of material consisting of small rocks grass root mat, grass and all that wonderful topsoil that I want to then compost, clean up add amendments as needed etc. and then put back in place. What type of equipment would I need to process said piles? Would a pto driven tub grinder help? Would the not quite small stones destroy the grinder before I even got started? Am I insane for even thinking of doing this? I figure scraping to the subsoil and creating piles of grass mat and top soil would be easy enough with a blade, pushing the piles around and turning them would be a loaders job. If I can keep them wet and maybe add a composting excelerent do I have any hope of making an awesome field over a month or so of very hard labor intensive work? Any input would be greatly appreciated Thanks, Hugh Betcha
Yair . . . HughBetcha. Yup. Cheers.
Depends on circumstances if this something you have to fix to be able to work the field and that is all you have then you might not be insane. But if you have other ground and can do something else with this field it would be cheaper. I would start with a heavy disc breaking up the sod multiple passes until grass is dead. Then pile with a dozer and leval the sub soil. Now with the piles turn them a few times and then screen them and respreads getting rid of the stones but using a large enough screen as not remove all of the decomposing grass. I thing a month will be pushing it if it is heavy sod but adding some nitrogen will speed it up.
D-6Rlgp and a 963 would do the job. maybe some trucks or scrapers to speed up long pushes. I would doze off rocks and grass into pile, start stripping black dirt, may have to screen out more rocks with screener or 963 with good teeth on bucket. Dig hole big enough for rocks and grass. cover up and grade, then re spread black dirt.:my2c
So you want to improve the drainage and workability? Can you be more specific as to the problems it has and what you want to do with it once it's done? Basically, it seems crazy, but there are some pretty wild things done in different places around the world, that actually work sometimes.
Did you end up discing the field?