S-tine vs C-tine cultivator

Dralon · May 6, 2018

I am pretty new to farming. I have a couple of acres to work. I own a disc but also looking to possibly add a field cultivator around a 12 foot one. Most of the land i work is clay soil, i only have 1.5 acre field that is filled with rocks the rest have barely have any rocks. I do not plan to plant corn mostly will be hay ground with possibly wheat rotation. Now my question which cultivator would work the best. Close to me it seems all the farmers use c tine one cultivator. Just wondering what are the pro and cons of each.

Thanks in advance

Adirondack case guy · May 6, 2018

I believe you need to look a little bit more into soil management, especially having clay soils.
Your disc is likely not a deep tillage version, and all discs cause soil compaction. You first need a primary tillage tool, such as a chisel plow, or moldboard plow to get down and loosen deeper soil.Then you need a tool like your disc to break clods, and then a finishing tool. You mentioned hay ground so for a finishing tool, I would recommend something like a Unverfurth Perfecta. It has Danish S tines closer together than teeth on a field cultivator, and has a rear roller basket to firm and smoothen the seed bed, so your finished hay fields are smooth and easy on haying equipment.
Loren

Russ from MN · May 6, 2018

We have 2 Ferguson/Dearborn 7 foot cultivators, originally with C-tines. Because we have a lot of rock I started breaking C-tines, so I
converted one of them to S-tines, which are very forgiving, but I don't think they will go very deep in hard ground. I put all the good C-
tines on one of them and I should sell it,I really don't need either one of them any more. We bought and used them when our tree
plantation was small. S-tines work best when you go fast!

Ken Macfarlane · May 6, 2018

We have both, the c tine we find works better for leveling but
it?s an old drag harrow type that you can adjust how
aggressive it is. I like to pull it behind the disc with it set 1-2?
deep.

DeltaRed · May 6, 2018

An S tine is more forgiveing. It will flex around rocks,but can also flex around large tough weeds.A Ctine is more prone to breakage from rocks,but will get the big tough weeds the Stine can miss.a c tine seems to penetrate the ground/go deeper better than the Stine

Dralon · May 6, 2018

This year i plan to work about 4 acres of land that were previously chisel plowed by my current farm renter. I am keeping some ground for myself to grow some hay for my alpaca herd.

From my 4 or so acres this year only about 1ish acres is filled with rocks. I also plan to work next year on a 2 or so acres again with rocks but aside from these 3 acres the rest of the farm is rock almost rock free but mostly heavy/clay soil.

I am planning to buy a plow later this year. I only have my grandfather ferguson cultivator

like this one:

It's long to work the soil with that and i was not too happy on how it prepared the soil. Hence why i want to see what is best. S-tine are extremely cheap here compared to the c ones so i was wondering the reason why.

Thank you for all the inputs

flying belgian · May 6, 2018

When s-tine first came out maybe 40 yrs. ago we all thought we had to have one. We tried to convince ourselves they worked good. We are all back to c-tine now. They might work good
if you went with a c-tine first but then what's the point.

Russ from MN · May 6, 2018

S-tines used to be cheap, I bought the tines, shovels and mounting brackets and built a 5 foot cultivator for the JD M we had, worked well, only had about 9 wide sweep shovels. I don't think it cost me much over $100.

Texasmark1 · May 7, 2018

Most S I have seen are light duty, unsuitable for clay or anything that hasn't seen a lot of steel to loosen it up. I too started out in farming
one day and had to learn the difference between plows and cultivators and when to use. You'll get the hang of it if you stay with old worn
out equipment (like I did) so you can get suitable answers before your money runs out. Grin

I started out 40 years ago and still have to sometimes try different implements to do a job and get it done. Seems every time you want to
do something the playing field is tilted in a different direction than previously.

S-tine vs C-tine cultivator

Dralon

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Adirondack case guy

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Russ from MN

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Ken Macfarlane

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DeltaRed

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Dralon

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flying belgian

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Russ from MN

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Texasmark1

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