I think that would probably work fine. You may even want to take a little of the bite out of your disks so that they don't try to plow up the dirt but more less just scratches the top of the ground up and cultipacks the vegetation.

From a mowing perspective....I have a Landpride bushhog and it does pretty good at scattering the hay. Even still though, most of the thatch crops I've put down have been really thick and just didn't process up well enough on the first pass. I'd still get a little wind rowing too with the heavy vegetation. It was the second pass back across the field that really scattered the hay and processed it up well. On that pass I would make sure to center any of the windrows from the first pass and they would disappear....distributing the hay much more evenly.