Our first 'tilling'!

[DawnSuiter]

I don't know how rural your area may be, but you might try to find someone with a big ol' tractor and pay them to do the initial tilling if your soil is that hard. Talk about getting down to business!

One of my neighbors tilled and expanded my garden for me last spring and I paid him in vegetables!

That would be ideal for sure.. but there is no way to get a tractor in there... oh boy that would be good though!

 

[Broke Down Ranch]

I have an older tiller. It is a rear-tine Wizard that my dad bought for my mom about 12-15 yrs ago. We have hard clay dirt that gets cracks the size of Dallas when it gets dry. Hard. After all these years my tiller still starts on the 3rd try - even after sitting for an entire year. And so far my motto is "if Bessie can't till it, it ain't worth tilling!" I swear that thing just chews it up and leaves it nice and smooth behind. Gotta love a good tiller. Our neighbor has a Troy-Bilt. You couldn't give me that thing......lol. it's a rear tine but the tines go in the same direction as the wheels so all it wants to do is run away with you (maybe that's why Troy-Bilt named them Bronco's....lol). They always call and ask if DH can come up and till for them

 

[DawnSuiter]

That sounds like a good one!

No one EVER wants to let go of the good ones

 

[digitS']

Dawn, I have a 17" walk-behind tiller and a little 31cc Honda. Which one does the best job and do I like to use? Neither.

I like to use a long-handled spading fork. And, it does a GREAT job !

I've got multiple gardens. One is tilled by the "tractor guy" . . . But, I've got one garden of about 1,600 square feet that hasn't seen a tiller - ever. For nearly 15 years, I've used a spading fork.

If there's a lot of material to work into the ground - I use a shovel. (I better say right now that DW is a good deal of help with both the fork and the shovel. ) Eight inches, or more, of soil is dug out of the bed and the material tossed in and covered in that trench.

There are no frames around these beds. Just the permanent paths which I have to clean out a little with the shovel, now and then. There are 8, 4' by 28' beds and the soil is as soft as cake flour down to 11 or 12 inches. It took me about 2 or 3 years to get them that way and I'm fortunate or unlucky (depending on what we are talking about ) to have a "good deal" of gravel in that soil.

Steve

 

[DawnSuiter]

Steve, that's so inspiring!
It's how we've gotten this far too.. our property is very small so we don't exactly, or should I say didn't, have access to a lot of materials, leaves, etc.. the chickens were strategically purchased during the time we were figuring out what we would need to get good soil to work.

We'll keep shoveling, your right, it does work... maybe a tiller is more of a novelty these days

 

[digitS']

The last 2 spading forks I bought came with short D-handles. I had to get the long handles seperately and replace the ones that were on the forks. (Still haven't figured out what to do with those short handles :/.)

The long handles allow you to drive the spading fork in with your foot and step back. That's about it - you could bend over all the way to the ground with the handle but I don't do that.

And, I don't lift !! Oh, it is easy-peasy - no lifting of the soil; and no machine jerking me around, no exhaust fumes, and no noise! Since I've been at it so long, the soil is already soft. And, no lifting and turning of the soil . . . did I already say that?


Steve
:tools

 

[ducks4you]

Broke Down Ranch, I know what you mean! But, the tiller I own works pretty good. I do baby it, however. Then, again, I've picked up bricks from my garden (that I'd forgotten to pick up as markers) and it didn't break, so maybe it's not so bad after all.

Somehow, when my MIL passed on, the really wonderful old tiller she used went missing. No foul play, I think that we had to go through so much stuff that we didn't pay any attention to who took it. It wasn't my SIL and husband, the only other still surviving relatives to my MIL, because they're happy to lend us things if we ask and we're on the best terms with them.

As I said earlier, the older, middle of the road tiller I used to own would be a great find for a mechanic who was willing to build a better gear box for it.