Will a tiller pull rocks up out of soil?

[jim_wilson]

Wondering if somebody can answer this question for me.....

I've got a piece of my property where I am raising the grade by 2-3 feet. It's New England, so the soil - both the subsoil and the topsoil, can be pretty rocky. I've laid down 1-2 feet of the subsoil ( diggings from another part of the property) - and next I'm going to bring it up to the grade I'm looking for by laying down 18 inches or so of topsoil.

The area I'm bringing up to grade is approximately 100ft x 100ft , I've pulled a ton of rocks from the subsoil as I see them surface when I dig and dump.

What I'd like to do is get as many of the rocks from the topsoil as I can - and I'm wondering if I ran a tiller thru it - if that would "pull" them from the soil - by depositing them behind or something like that as I made a pass with the tiller.

I've never used a tiller before - but I thought I remembered seeing a few videos showing the rocks nicely being left behind after making a pass with a tiller.

 

[s219]

Chances are, you'll jam the tiller and break a lot of shear pins (and worse) but I am extrapolating from my experience with other debris -- haven't tried tilling rocky soil myself. Small stuff passes through, big stuff will make the tiller vibrate and jump, and medium stuff can get stuck in the tines.

If it was me, I might try a box blade with the rippers down but cutting edge up (so shorten the top link as much as possible). That probably won't go down more than about 6" though -- maybe less -- so you'd need to do something else if you want to go after rocks deeper than that.

Growing up in CT, I remember putting a few hundred feet of fencing in with my dad, and we got enough rocks to build a small stone wall.... I don't think we dug a single post hole that didn't have at least 2-3 rocks in it. Remarkable soil up there.

 

[jim_wilson]

Yes - there's a lot of rocks. I've already got a rock pile that is currently about 4 feet high by 10 foot wide and 20 feet long. And I've actually used a lot of the rocks I've pulled out for backfill on a retaining wall and as base fill under a stone wall I started building.

All of this is out of 1/2 acre lot.

The larger rocks are not the ones I'm worried about - they will fall out of the soil as I dig it from the pile with the tractor bucket and when I dump it, it's the smaller ones ( up to say 5" in diameter) - that I'm wondering about.

 

[jim_wilson]

Maybe a better way to phrase the question is: assuming that the rocks are small enough to pass thru the tiller - what does it do with them? Does bury them or chuck them to the surface ? And is the behavior different between the forward and reverse tillers?

 

[GreatWhitehunter]

As a fellow New Englander I can relate to this topic in a big way. I've found the tiller will pull round rocks to the surface for picking but shale tends to get stuck. I would use a tiller with a slip clutch over shear pins any day. Here's a few pics of a plot I tilled last weekend, this was virgin grounds and I began by using a scarifier to break up the ground before tilling. As you see there's a few piles of rocks. There were also a few larger ones that the scarifiers pulled up.
It took roughly three passes in opposite direction to get these results. I was running a Befco 50" offset tiller and had the slip clutch smoking a few times.
It will pull the rocks to the surface.

 

[Gary Fowler]

It seems rocks do get pulled up near the surface but they are sometimes still covered with soil or about the same color so they get missed when picking them up. I always have a bunch showing after a rain even though I scour the ground for them. Every time I till, I turn up more. I did the box blade scarifier thing, then bought a subsoiler (basically a box blade scarifer without the box and blade) and it can go at least 12" deep so it turned up a lot more rocks. I even used my backhoe and digging down about 2-3 feet to remove all the rocks from the garden but still missed some when I tilled again. They appear to be like the "Star Trek Tribbles" as they multiply very fast.

I suppose if you put enough top soil on them to get below the freeze line they would stay put, at least for a few years. Short of pulling a rock picker thru at 2-3 feet deep and I don't even know if this would be possible even with a 150 HP tractor, I don't know how one would get them all.
I just tried to get at least the larger stuff that bounced my tiller off the ground. Smaller stuff I can pick up as they show up after rains or cultivation.

 

[Sysop]

You're never going to take the rocks out efficiently once the dirt is down. You need to sift the rocks out as you bring it in. Get something you can use to screen the topsoil from the rocks.

 

[super55]

A tiller will definitely bring the rocks up. Personally I've never had an issue with rocks getting jammed between the tines and the housing but I am sure it is a possibility.

I had a few food plots that were really rocky after I tilled. What I ended up doing was using my York rake to rake them all out after tilling. The trick is to leave about 1 tine for every 4 in the rake to open up the spacing so the dirt doesn't pile up. Works great for pulling rocks and sod out of a garden while still leaving the dirt. It was by far the best thing I ever did to a pretty much useless tool to me previously.

 

[nybirdman]

I tell you what;my property (Northern NY) has been farmed since the 1850's and I am still pulling rocks.There are rock fences and piles everywhere.
The tiller will pull them up for sure;maybe a rock bucket after that.Good luck.

 

[countrybumpkin]

You're never going to take the rocks out efficiently once the dirt is down. You need to sift the rocks out as you bring it in. Get something you can use to screen the topsoil from the rocks.

This would be the best way to do it if your bringing in the dirt from another location, you tube has several videos of home built screens.