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Modifications To Phoenix Rolling Harrow
When we decided to grow organic crops, we had to find ways to get along without herbicides while avoiding excessive tillage costs.
We liked the ability of the Phoenix "rolling" harrow to root out weeds and incorporate chemicals, but we couldn't justify the expense of a new machine. So we bought an old 36-ft. Mor
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Modifications To Phoenix Rolling Harrow TILLAGE EUIPMENT Miscellaneous 23-1-35 When we decided to grow organic crops, we had to find ways to get along without herbicides while avoiding excessive tillage costs.
We liked the ability of the Phoenix "rolling" harrow to root out weeds and incorporate chemicals, but we couldn't justify the expense of a new machine. So we bought an old 36-ft. Morris rod weeder equipped with a 15-ft. center section and two wings that folded up for transport. We stripped the machine down to the frame. Then we bought a Phoenix rotary harrow cultivator kit - originally designed to be strapped on back of a tillage tool - and mounted it on the frame. We modified the ends of the frame so that we could mount the rotary harrow "end stocks" and be able to adjust them forward or backward in order to change the working angle of the harrows.
We cut off both ends of the frame to make the machine 30 ft. wide, then removed the end wheels and moved the wheel mounts in about 4 ft. We turned the end piece on each frame 90 degrees so that it ran parallel to the direction of travel and provided a 4-in. sq. frame on which to mount the end stocks.
We use the machine when seeding canola. "The harrow packs, smooths, and incorporates in one pass and uses only half as much power as a comparable size cultivator."
When a wet spring kept us from using seed drills on barley fields, we used a fertilizer spreader to broadcast seed and cultivate it in shallow, then used our home-built rotary harrow twice to pack and further incorporate the seed. We've also used it on experimental strips to rejuvenate pasture and hay land. It doesn't tear up the field like a disk or cultivator. The harrows penetrate to a depth of only about 1/2 in., but that's enough to stimulate grass growth. It also knocks down gopher mounds and does a good job of spreading cow manure on pastures.(Kirk and Gary Harrold, Lamont, Alberta, Canada T0B 2R0 ph 403 895-2564)
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