Weed Abatement on Steep Hills?

[NF6X]

As you may know, southern California is flammable. Weed abatement is an annual (at least) chore for those of us lucky enough to own acreage here. Just to drive the point home, one of my neighbors had a brush fire yesterday (contained without property damage, thankfully), and today I drove by the site of another brush fire that the fire department had just finished putting out.

I've finished mowing most of my 5 acres with my brand new L3301 and 60" Land Pride brush hog. I think it works a lot better than what I used to do: scraping up the dry weeds with the bucket of my old Bobcat 753, which I sold to help pay for the new tractor. My property has a valley running through it, and it was all terraced for a citrus orchard. What's left are the dry weeds on the parts of the property which are too steep to drive the tractor on. There are some larger embankments as well as strips of steep ground between some of the old terraces.

I'm not sure how to tackle the steep parts now, and I wonder if y'all might have some good suggestions. It's a lot more area than I want to weed by hand, and there are parts that are even a bit steep to climb without dropping down on all fours. I thought that I might put something at the top of a hill, run a chain or cable down the hill, hitch it to the tractor drawbar, and then drag it down the hill to scrape off the dry brush.

I thought I might be able to scrape the dry brush this way with the old crane cable that I replaced on my M936A1 wrecker. It's about 100' of 1/2" wire rope. I did a little experiment with it today, and it didn't work very well. It looks like the cable is too light, so it slides over the brush instead of breaking it off.

I wonder if one of those drag harrows from Tractor Supply might work?

A contractor once suggested taking a section of scrap railroad track and chaining it up to use as a drag harrow of sorts. I don't know where to look for scrap railroad track, but I do still have the old A-frame hitches that were cut off the front of my manufactured home after it was delivered. They're made from 12" tall I-beam, so maybe I could use that scrap material to make some sort of drag harrow.

One of those rigs with a brush cutter on a hydraulic arm would be fantastic, but those are way out of my price range.

So, do any of y'all have good suggestions for my hillside weed removal?

 

[D2Cat]

If this area is so steep you have to get down on all fours to weed by hand, it sure doesn't sound like you'd want to be on it with a tractor!

Post some pictures. I can't visualize what you think might work by pulling some implement down the incline with a tractor to remove weeds. And if you got down it safely, how would you return back up to repeat the operation?

 

[NF6X]

I'll see if I can take some good pictures tomorrow. I figured I would carry the implement to the top of the slopes with forks on the loader, in the cases where the top of the slope is tractor-accessible. Where they aren't, I figured I'd shake my fist at the hill, angry-old-man style.

 

[D2Cat]

Here's a tool that might work. The price on this one is way out of line though. I see them around here once in a while at the scrapper, and scrap is $110 a ton.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Old-Hay-Rake-Farm-Equipment-Antique-/142087394285

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

Why do you wait till the weeds grow and die?
Why don't you spray them before they grow, so you don't have to deal with them getting to be to the point of being a fire hazard?

 

[NF6X]

Next year, I plan to do the mowing earlier in the season. I don't want to spray poison all over my property.

 

[Steve Neul]

How big of an area are we talking about that is too steep to mow? If it's not real large you might cover the hill with rocks and evergreen bushes. Put down that cloth that grass can't grow through and make it a non-mow area.

 

[skeets]

Looks like you have some of the compound fenced in so just get a heard of sheep or goats. Then sell them off in the fall and get new ones in the spring

 

[William1]

I too, would spray. Most weed killers (Glyphosate) become attached to the soil very quickly (24 hours) and if you do it two days before any raining, you do not run the risk of the chemical migrating to where it is not wanted. Very inexpensive.
That or I'd terrace (20' wide), and make the level terraced sections fire breaks with weed fabric and gravel.

 

[sheepfarmer]

It's been a while since I lived out that way, but your bumper crop of weeds is probably due to the wet spring. I wouldn't denude those steep slopes of all vegetation because of the mudslide erosion problem, and killing off everything with Roundup will just get you even more obnoxious weeds next year.. Seems like Riverside is close enough to the coast that you could gradually get a groundcover like iceplant to grow on the really steep slopes? What did the citrus farmers use to hold the ground before?

In the meantime, maybe the lesser of several evils is hand mowing. There are also several threads around where people have ingeniously attached a hand mower to a boom on their tractor to mow side slopes next to ditches and ponds.

 

[NF6X]

I'm sorry I didn't get any pictures today. Had to do Father's Day stuff. A good time was had by all.

Yes, the weeds were especially lush this year, thanks to the healthy rainy season. The bunnies and bees love the greens and flowers, but then summer comes and reminds us all that this is a bit of a desert.

This year, I got a late start on the weeds. A tire was off the rim on the Bobcat, and I procrastinated fixing it. Then I decided to upgrade to a tractor. Next year, I plan to start mowing sooner, but hopefully not so soon that I need to do it twice. I've made that miscalculation before. The Bobcat's bucket never worked excellently on the weeds until they were dry and brittle, but my new brush hog should work just great on green weeds.

Iceplant and the like should be good for the embankment around the pad that my house is built on. I just haven't gotten around to that yet.

Hand mower on a boom, huh? Now you have me thinking silly thoughts about mounting a lawn mower in place of the backhoe bucket.

 

[sheepfarmer]

Not so silly! Tried to cut and paste links, but tablet misbehaving. If you put "mowing steep bank" as search terms in the OTT search function, you will get a few threads with videos and pics in the posts. Click on the search tab then choose "advanced search". I don't think I saw one with a backhoe though, yours would be a first!

 

[clay45]

I'm a big fan of creeping Lily turf. Just keep surrounding ground clear and it will take over. Just don't be in a hurry.

 

[Firedogg]

One word.... goats. Use a water soluble paint to make 'em orange.

 

[Grizzy3901]

I second firedog I have 4 Nigerian dwarfs 2 are under a year they will clear it in no time. Electric net fence and a controller and your ready to go. A 5 gallin bucket of water will last them a couple days. If you have kids try to get goats that have been bottle feed and they will come sit with you and be part of the family. If they are debudded you don't have to worry about them causing damage to each other when they head butt.

 

[NF6X]

I have zero interest in keeping goats. But even if I did, I am skeptical that they would be very interested in the entirely dead, dry brush that I need to clear. At best, goats could be a solution next year during the rainy season. Once the brush dries out after the annual rainy season, there's nothing alive to forage on for the next 9 months.

I got a 6'W x 8'L drag harrow last weekend, and started experimenting with dragging it down a steep embankment. It does a mediocre job scraping off the dry brush, and it's also a lot of effort to position it at the top of an embankment, route a cable down to the bottom, drag it down the hill, and repeat, only to find that I misjudged the angle and wasted all of that effort re-dragging over the same strip. But the harrow is still useful anyway. Here are some pictures of the experiment:

Those pictures show one of the steep embankments I have, which I at least have easy access to the top of. Much too steep to drive on. Even climbing the hill is dangerous; I fell on my ass once and scraped my lower back while dragging the cable down the hill, and that wasn't even one of the steepest areas. I dragged the harrow with the tines up to limit how much the dirt was disturbed.

There are also some embankments without such easy access to the top, and narrow strips in between the terraced rows where citrus trees were planted 20 years ago. The clear areas that are visible are the larger areas where the brush cutter worked nicely, aside from making lots of dust. I plan to hit the weeds while they're still green next year. It was already well into the dry season this year when I bought my lovely orange tractor.

I have another experiment in mind for after my bucket hooks arrive. I scraped off the dry weeds in some of the corners where I could poke the bucket in and then drag it back out in float. That works OK, except where the dirt is angled such that the bucket edge doesn't make good contact with the ground. So, I think I'll try hanging just the front 4' section of the two-piece drag harrow off the bucket hooks so that I can poke it into a corner while it's lifted off the ground, set it down, and then drag it out backwards. Maybe that will work out in some of the nooks and crannies? I'll need to be careful about balance and tangling the front wheels, of course. But I mention this all just in case it's an idea that is OMGWTFBBQ dangerous, and I just don't know it yet because I'm a tractor noob! If it's a profoundly stupid idea, then I figure one of y'all will give me the textual yelling-at that I need.

Anyway, Independence Day has come and gone, and my dumbass neighbors launching large, illegal aerial fireworks over their dry field didn't manage to set the whole place on fire. The nearest 390 acre brush fire was a comfortable four miles away, on the other side of the big man-made lake. The sky was nice and clear this year, so I could see dozens of community fireworks displays, and far more unsanctioned acts of incendiary defiance, in the vast swaths of suburbia and urbia that I am blessed with being able to see from my hilly acreage. The Riverside City fireworks display is always especially nice, and I'm at a great spot to see it from my front porch. I always like to see what new and exciting shells the fireworks engineers have designed since the previous year; there always seems to be at least one impressive new design each year. I think we're safe from King George for another year.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

That is one heck of a lot of dead land, it's sad, they used to grow so much on that land before everyone moved in and they stole all the water that the plants were getting.
Looks like the land during the great dust bowl!

Get a very heavy cable or chain, drive a stake in the top side of the center of the hill and attach one end of the chain or cable to the stake, drape the chain or cable down the hill, attach a light weight chain or cable on the bottom end of the heavy chain or cable, then drag the heavy chain or cable across the hill.

 

[NF6X]

I'm mere miles from the tree that's the grandpappy of every seedless navel orange in the world, but most of the citrus orchards in my area have shut down because it's just not economical to pipe in enough water for them. Well, at least all of that brown, dead stuff was gorgeous and green for a few months during the rainy season, burping out delicious oxygen as the bunnies frolicked underneath. Almost makes up for the annual pain in the bottom of mowing the weeds before fire season.

Hmm, that tethered chain idea has some merit. It's kind of like what I was hoping do do with that 1/2" cable that I'm using to drag the harrow, but the cable was too light to do much to the weeds. Maybe the idea was sound, but I just needed more weight!

I just know that if I got a goat, it would turn out to be more finicky than a cat. It wouldn't touch the weeds, and it would only eat the premium canned goat food, scowling at me the whole time.

 

[D2Cat]

I have a friend who tells stories of clearing growth in Vietnam. They'd take two Cats, usually D6C's. and attach a couple hundred feet chain from a boat anchor and both head out in the same direction!

Him telling about the obstacles and challenges made an interesting word picture. I guess they cleared everything between them, as long as they stayed out of big holes!

 

[scdeerslayer]

I have a friend who tells stories of clearing growth in Vietnam. They'd take two Cats, usually D6C's. and attach a couple hundred feet chain from a boat anchor and both head out in the same direction!

Him telling about the obstacles and challenges made an interesting word picture. I guess they cleared everything between them, as long as they stayed out of big holes!

According to my uncle they use flamethrowers for that, or maybe that was just the patches of wild marijuana.