Tillage device

Claim 1

A power driven rotary soil tillage device comprising, in combination: a mobile frame; a rotatable transverse shaft on said frame; means for driving said shaft from a power source; a plurality of rotary tillage members on said shaft, the members having blades which include radially extending portions terminating in outer end portions that extend generally parallel to the shaft, said outer end portions of said blades describing a cylinder of rotation about the shaft when the latter is rotated, with the lower part of said cylinder affording a working sector in which the blades penetrate and break up soil into a fine tilth to a depth for forming a seed bed, said blades moving downwardly through the front of said working sector; and transversely spaced soil erupting members operatively associated with the rotary tillage members, each said soil erupting member having a shank which is effectively rigidly secured to the frame behind the shaft and merges into a tooth portion that extends diagonally downwardly and forwardly of the device and terminates in a pointed tip which is entirely below a plane tangent to the bottom of the working sector and below the depth for forming a seed bed, and a sufficient distance forward of the vertical median plane of said sector at all times, and the soil erupting member being so shaped that as the device moves forward the tooth portions erupt soil upwardly from below seed bed depth into the path of forward movement of the blades which initially engage the erupted soil in the forward half of the working sector and break said soil into an acceptable tilth, whereby said device may simultaneously prepare a seed bed and break up compacted soil below the level of the seed bed.