Not that familiar with KS.

Were you planning to put the whole 5 acres in punkins?

Gee. Linus would be SOOO happy.

But if you can rent a large chipper, you could probably chip up those saplings in a weekend.

I used a tractor mounted auger once. Are cedar saplings hard to rip out?

Could you use the auger to loosen up the soil? If they're as bad as Sumac saplings it would be lots of work any other way.

Anyway, it's a large area to deal with. You could plant them in hills, sure. But a hill should be about the area of three auger holes, I'd think.

Only problem is, punkins need water. Five acres of punkins would need several tons of water. How's your rainfall?

The no-till movement is sound, although it's a bit hard to imagine caring for punkins in that kind of overgrowth. What about mowing the rows? You've got enough space, you can leave ten feet between rows and keep the weeds down with a tractor that has a belly mower.

If the ground is uneven, though, it might be best to have it plowed once to level the playing field....

If you want to suppress weeds, chip up the cedar and use it to mulch the punkin hills.

And then it'll be a truly SINCERE punkin patch.