How big of a PHD?

Rockbadchild · Aug 9, 2025

yes for sandy soil you have to turn it off like you did... watch to not go too deep and exceed the lifting capacity (aka lifting the front end)

For clay if its wet you have to be careful if it corkscrew in you have to lift it parodically if not it can get stuck, as long as it comes out in chucks you are fin but yourself in sand you should be just fine... I run my tractor idle when I do my holes and I watch for rocks and I am ready to lift the 3point when I start earing the bit grinding on rocks. While it goes down I also clean around the hole so materiel doesn't go back in and if I want max dept I will remove the material that falls back in using a hand auger.

old and tired · Aug 9, 2025

For what it's worth, I take multiple smaller bites before I get to the depth I'm looking for....

Rockbadchild · Aug 9, 2025

old and tired said:
For what it's worth, I take multiple smaller bites before I get to the depth I'm looking for....

It comes to a point with experience you can tell what the auger is doing and what you need to do in your soil and moisture...

dnw64 · Aug 31, 2025

Well we got it done yesterday. Everything went far better than expected. Partly because there were no issues with the PHD, and I had twice as many peolpe show than expected to help (and most of them had experience planting). We had all 61 trees planted within 2 hours.

I had been concerned we might run into some roots from some large trees not too far from where we were planting. My biggest concern with that was that the auger might get tangled/caught up in them, and with no reverse it could be a big hassle getting it out. Well we did run into some, but it just slowly chewed through them.

Got the drip line installed and one load of wood chips spread, all done in time for an early lunch. I was hoping to just get the trees planted by the end of the day...