Question from a greenfield newby, recently purchased a property which has approximately 40 acres of 3 year old planted pines as well as various other ages of hardwoods (total 216 acres). With the planted pines, I took a dozer and cleared around 7 acres of fields in different places w different entry points to hunt on different winds. Dozing took place in March and got up last weekend to bush hog all the new fields which are now mowed down to less than one foot.

My question is although I used the dozer and got the great majority of the pines and roots out of the way, what would be the best tool to truly get the fields in good planting shape? I plan on spraying the areas prior to discing or tilling but would you use a disc, turning plow, or a tiller? My 45 hp tractor has a 6 foot tiller but I could get access to a disc if needed but what I didn't want to do is booger up the tiller if I needed to use something else to get it in good shape. I have a fear of messing up the tiller if I need something a little heavier to get the ground truly broken up.

Thanks in advance!

3 year pines aren't going to have much of a root system. Any good disk should handle it.

Hopefully you don’t have a bunch of sticks and branches to deal with. They can slow down the operation when they get hung up in the equipment.

I would not run a tiller on that.

A 45 hp tractor should be able to handle a 7’ disc, but honestly you need more tractor and disc to effectively break ground up with 3 year old bush-hogged snags in it.

Without a big tractor and a really heavy disc, it’s gonna take you 2-3 years to get them right.

I had a field that was overgrown with volunteer pines for probably 7-8 years b/c of access issues. Got that addressed and had it mulched. I've run a heavy hydraulic disk over it a few times and just whirly birded seed out. It's done ok and had deer using it last season, but I'd say it's 2-3 years of doing this before I really expect it to start doing well.

Thanks everyone for the comments. Kinda what I expected to hear and helps me plan going forward. Lots of snags, branches and growth on the fields now so I will get my hands on a disk and start working it into proper shape over the next few years. It has a few fields that have previously been worked by the previous lease holder of the club but as it was timber company land they were unable to do much other than plant previous landing areas but those should be easy to plant.

don’t forget the soil sample to get started on the right foot…

yessir first thing i did when i bought the place was samples on all the areas i wanted to make plots. most of them were in the mid 6s already on pH but a couple were 5.8 so I am getting all the fields limed up. the areas where green fields were already in place had really good pH so the previous hunters did a good job it appears.

WE are gonna be fight the same thing for the next 2-3 years. Disk until we get the stumps gone. Then perhaps we can till. Saturday I reclaimed 2 fields that hadnt been touched in 2 season. so overgrown I had to set the front bucket down and feel my way over all the stumps. The bucket actually knocked several stumps out of the ground that were rotted and that land was cut 4 years ago. They rot pretty quick if that helps you understand your time line. No way I would put a tiller on it until then.

Does your tractor have a front end loader? I asked because my buddy bought an attachment for his quick attach that has a toothed apparatus that digs up stumps. He says it works like a champ but I have not used it yet. Something similar to this:
https://www.goodworkstractors.com/product/gwt-heavy-duty-stump-wrecker-stump-bucket/

Yes mine has a front end loader--lucky for me had a buddy who had a dozer and got it up there during the offseason and removed pretty much all the stumps out of the ground from existing trees which had been cut prior to replanting the 3 yr old pines. I've walked the fields and thrown all the large rocks and tangles out that were still there after the dozer work. Went up a couple of weeks ago and bushhogged everything down to 6 inches or so, and then went up last week and sprayed the remainder of everything that was still present.

Plan is now to wait a couple of weeks and take a disc and a 2 row turning plow and just slowly work the dirt before doing any tilling. Lucky for me a couple of the fields had been planted in the past so they should be pretty easy to get back up and running, but I've still got 4-5 acres of reclaimed ground that will take a few years to get all smoothed out. The majority of the grounds had pretty good soil samples as well especially the existing fields which tells me the previous lease folks must have done a good job keeping it up. Also have a fella coming to lime the crap out of everything but realize I will not see much from that this year.

Been a lot of fun so far, this is my first piece of property and I've had a ball learning as I go. Between youtube and the Southern U podcast Ive been studying up pretty hard!