Grading box blade or disc it

[Soundguy]

Yep.. pretty much the same with cactus.

When we bought our land.. it was pretty much rolling pasture.. with some cactus randomly located on the property. I know from experience, that brushhogging only propigated the cactus. Ag extension mentioned adding lime to change the soil PH and the cactus didn't prefer that and it would slow growth... but in the end.. Me and the wife and a couple of 30 gallon trash cans.. gloves.. and some small garden tools defrocked the pasture of cactus... took many weekends.. but it never came back.

Soundguy

 

[cisco]

Box with scarifiers will work, as per another post, but you'll sure spend a lot of time. A disc harrow (OK, a disc with some sort of dirt clod buster device trailing behind) would be fine, if the soil is soft, say after a few days of heavy rain (otherwise, the size disc that your tractor could pull won't penetrate the soil much - just too light). A tiller is the ticket, if you can rent one - buy one if you're going to prepare a large (1/2 acre plus) vegetable or whatever garden yearly.
Good luck (I've just come off a tractor after spending hours leveling trucked-in soil over a drainage pipe and wide, but too low, dam I created a few weeks ago - there is NO more boring task than distributing and leveling "fill" over a wide area - and then you have to distribute and level a layer of topsoil so grass will take and prevent erosion).