Landscape Rake or Drag Harrow or ?? for weeds

[ustmd]

Hello,
I have been lurking here for about 1 year and have gotten some great information as well as seeing some good project and tractor "****".:laughing:
I have found some related posts, but nothing that deals with my issue directly. My wife and I have "inherited" a sand horse arena--the neighbor was running a commercial stable for jumpers and dressage, but packed up and moved about 18 months ago.
The arena is great (4-6 inches of sand on a compacted road base), but now that it is only being used by the wife on the week-ends, we are constantly battling the weeds that are popping up from seeds being blown in.
I am getting a power sprayer for Roundup to regularly spray, but I am still left with the dead grass and weeds that come up easily by hand.
Being a firm believer in not doing anything by hand that could be done by a piece equipment, I have trying to decide what attachment I could buy that could help weed the sand arena.
I was thinking about a chain harrow, but I am concerned that it would just bounce along the surface. I have also been wondering about a Landscape rake as I could adjust the depth and the tines are close enough together that there is a better chance of "hooking" the dead weeds/grass. The TR3 arena groomer looks pretty, but if I spent that much on a tool and it didn't do what I needed, the wife would never let me forget it.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,
-Todd

 

[magicheater]

People have reported that the Rachet Rake is good for what you describe.

 

[easygo]

If the sand is at least semi soft a landscape rake would probably work well with gauge wheels. It would make the arena look really nice with lines if you worked out a pattern to drive without leaving tire tracks.

 

[KennyV]

easygo, has the right direction...
Nothing on the front loader will give you anything in your arena that you will like...
The landscape rake will allow you to groom it regularly and not spend a lot on chemicals... KennyV

 

[ustmd]

Thats for the greta info. A quick question, the purpose of the gauge wheels on the landscape rake is? I am guessing to keep one side of the rake from "riding up" if you hit a rough or tough patch

 

[KennyV]

purpose of the gauge wheels on the landscape rake is?

Gage wheels will greatly help in eliminating the 'whoop-de-doos' that you will get just pulling a fixed rear mount blade or rake. KennyV

 

[charlz]

Chain harrow with the teeth down in the 'aggressive' position will likely work... but there is no good way to clean it out. You end up having to pick the whole thing up and pulling the weeds out.

 

[MarkV]

You might also want to look into soil sterilizers for future maintenance. It will keep anything from sprouting for a year or better. They sell some brands at the box stores and Ag supply places also carry them.

MarkV

 

[savageactor7]

I would have thought dragging something like a spiked toothed harrow over the arena would be easier than making it a FEL project. Probably take as long to make the hook up as to groom that to perfection.

 

[bota7800]

Long post:

I have a spike harrow that hangs from a frame on the 3PH. It does a good job smoothing the arena but does not take out the pasture grass and weeds that have been encroaching in the corners. My arena is gravel, not sand, so YMMV.

After reading this thread I decided to try my landscape rake that happened to be attached at the moment. It did pretty well removing vegetation, taking out 60 - 80 % by my guess. It resulted in a lot of hand loading of debris into the FEL bucket but the arena looks a lot better. There is still a lot of small "plugs" of grass so the grass will fill in again.

i would not want to have a landscape rake as my only arena groomer because it moves too much material around and it is easy to mess up the grade since it is rigidly attached to the tractor. I created washboard waves that I had to smooth out by running at 90 degrees to the original direction.