Won't start the Tiller this Fall

[digitS']

I understand that there is something called a "floral shovel." Sounds, ummm pleasant.

I use a long handled, round point shovel. You can buy them for $60 some places online. The local hardware store sells them for 18 bucks.

There's a fracture of the C6 or C7 vertebrae known as the "clay-shoveler's fracture." I don't think I've got it but . . . Lucky me , my garden soil is gravel. I have multiple problems with the back, however :/.

For many years, I've had a compost pile. In fact, I've had various using slightly different techniques and located in different gardens. This year, I'm doing the composting by the compost-in-place approach (click).

I've done this for several years, actually, nearly 40. But back then, I didn't have to be so careful about my back, then . . .

The digging took almost 4 months beginning in mid-July to dig out all my permanent beds in the little veggie garden. I should come close to finishing, today. About 1600 square feet of beds and paths will have been dug out. I'll count the permanent paths too since the process of moving soil on and then scraping it off is an important late season weeding of those paths.

Right up until this month, I'd planned on dragging the rototiller out and running it over at least part of that garden. Fortunately, I've had enuf compostables, enuf good weather, and enuf strength to nearly get thru this. I've kept up at about 100 square feet of bed every couple of days since the 1st frost. Quite a bit of exercise for this old fella.

I appreciate the tiller but I am very, very happy NOT to have started that noisy, smoke belching machine ! And, the shovel has done a much better job incorporating organic material and cultivating deeply than the machine ever could have accomplished.

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

I turn my 50' x 75' garden with a shovel and run a tiller over it to level it and bust up the clods. I actually think the shovel is easier in mine which has very few rocks or gravel in it. It gets deeper too, bringing up more of those minerals from down deep. I never do the whole garden at one time. I've always got something in part of it. In the winter, I have leeks, garlic, chard and kale overwintering and keep carrots stored in the ground.

I usually turn a certain part of it in the fall to prepare for early spring planting. I can usually get a short window in March or early April to get my early stuff planted, lettuce, radishes, potatoes, carrots, beets, and all that. If I don't have it already prepared, it is real hard to get a window dry enough to prepare it and plant it before the next rain. I wait until spring to turn and prepare the area for the after-all-danger-of-frost stuff.

Just a different way in a different climate and situation. I can sympathize somewhat with your back, but my problem is more in my leg. It's not the one with the old football injury either.

Anyway, congratulations on seeing the end of this phase and rest well for the next round.

 

[hoodat]

Looks as though I'm not alone. I don't even own a tiller at present. Like Steve I take it just a piece at a time. Patience is a virtue in the garden. I've been thinking of a mantis but if I get one it will be electric. Those little gas engines are nothing but trouble.

 

[digitS']

I've got a Craftsman 850 (I think it is) with 17" tines. It's a little bigger than the 5hp that I used to have for so long and which was probably to blame for some of my back problems :/. I mean, you can control a shovel!

The tiller gets plenty of work in the larger garden in the spring. Too much work, since the rocks are larger there. Clang! Bang! Clunk! Uh-oh . . . another broken shear pin . . .

Then I've got a little Honda (same engine as on the Mantis). It has fairly limited usefulness but does a modestly good job with killing weeds and cultivating around plants grown in rows, like the corn. I can't kill a roundleaf mallow weed with it tho' so they poke up in the paths above the cultivated soil after a week, or so :bun.

The tiller attachment for the weedwacker does a good job of mixing fertilizer into already cultivated soil and it levels the soil fairly well. I just walk around the bed a few times. It can be a little hard on the back tho', since it is a heavy attachment for that weedwhacker. I broke the shaft on one just packing it around . . .

Many years ago, I religiously didn't own a hoe. The shovel was my only hand tool in the garden. With a little moisture in the ground, it works good as a weeding tool but takes a little more push than I've got, these days.
Maybe that "floral shovel" :rainbow-sun would work better for that job!

Steve

 

[lesa]

That's a lot of good work, Steve! Just think of all the wonderful exercise, and the vitamin D you absorbed!

 

[Collector]

WOW Steve, as somebody who knows about the valley soil [ROCK] that must have been some brutally hard work. I dont envy you a bit, but your garden will be better for it.

 

[digitS']

I have said that it takes me 3 years to work the soil down to 10 or 11 inches. Obviously, with a pick and a shovel, someone (else) can dig a ditch that deep at a single go.

It is just that I have had no inclination to go deeper than I can comfortably dig by stepping on the shovel. Stepping on a spading fork is how I usually cultivate those gardens but I have now dug out each and every bed at least a half dozen time over the 14 years I've been gardening there.

Initially, I only found about 8" of topsoil there. Some beds now have, probably, 16" of soil that represents what was there originally and the organic material that has been added. I'm still scrapping bottom here and there and once in a while, turn up a large rock but not often.

It got easier, somewhere a long the line . . . thank heavens!

Steve

 

[thistlebloom]

I did start the tiller this fall, it's my trusty little Troybuilt that I bought over 20 years ago. My DH replaced the Tecumseh engine it came with , with a Honda engine. It runs like a top! I love to use it, even tho I beat the snot out of it on the rocks we have.
Mostly I use it around the perimeter of the lawn to edge it , so you can tell where the lawn ends and the wild begins!:mow The edged areas are turning into a dry creek bed where said rocks are going. I figure I'll complete it sometime before 2030,( not because of any lack of the raw materials ). I also use it (tiller) in the fall to incorporate the shredded leaves into the veggie beds. I have very little of what could be called topsoil, and you HAVE to use a pick to plant shrubs and trees.
I used the lasagna method for my perennial beds and the soil in them is deep and rich, like chocolate cake.
I'm hungry!