Tillers/cultivators

[Caplock50]

I'm wanting to put in a garden. I can't count on my SIL being available to cultivate the ground when I need him to. So, I've put together a bit of money and am going to buy me a tiller. So, now the question is...front tines? or rear tines? What do ya'll like and why? SIL is telling me...front tines, because you can get into tighter areas with them and you can see exactly where the tines are. But, the rear tine jobbies are self-propelled,...and in my shape, I need that feature. And I have only about $500.00 to spend.

But, I want your opinions on what *you* like and why.

Thanks in advance.

[Navajo]

Rent one. Less than $100 and you can rent big ones to make it a lot quicker.

Or look on Craigslist or at garage sales.

I found a $500 Crafysman one for sale at $30 from a guy who ways moving the next day and was getting desperate.

[Limner]

I'm wanting to put in a garden. I can't count on my SIL being available to cultivate the ground when I need him to. So, I've put together a bit of money and am going to buy me a tiller. So, now the question is...front tines? or rear tines? What do ya'll like and why? SIL is telling me...front tines, because you can get into tighter areas with them and you can see exactly where the tines are. But, the rear tine jobbies are self-propelled,...and in my shape, I need that feature. And I have only about $500.00 to spend.

But, I want your opinions on what *you* like and why.

Thanks in advance.

Cappy, if I had that money to spend, I'd buy more soil and some untreated boards (sawmill rough cuts work fine) and make some raised beds. We LOVE ours...and one of the reasons Ilove it is that I can go in with a trowel and stir it up and plant whenever I want and son't have to wait for Hubby to run that big ole' tiller. SOOOO much nicer, and easier on an old sore back, too.

[goatlady]

Right on, Limner, raised beds are the only way to go for us "older" folks. I can "till" my beds with my hands even, real quick cause the soid stays so nice and fluffy. Grows more stuff in a small space also, Cap. Check out Mel Barthalomew's Sq. Ft. Gardening book, web site and then modify for you needs. I can get 144 bush green bean plants in a 4' x 4" square which is plenty for fresh eating AND canning for the winter. 12 nice tomatoe plants in another 4 x 4 square. I sit on anoverturned 5-gal bucket for planting and harvesting - easy on the bak and knees that way.

[2dollarbill]

Cappy, if I had that money to spend, I'd buy more soil and some untreated boards (sawmill rough cuts work fine) and make some raised beds. We LOVE ours...and one of the reasons Ilove it is that I can go in with a trowel and stir it up and plant whenever I want and son't have to wait for Hubby to run that big ole' tiller. SOOOO much nicer, and easier on an old sore back, too.


Limners' got a point worth considering cap. I purchased a tiller off craiglist as someone suggested. I have a front tine job. I tell ya, it could tear up a parking lot and turn it into a garden. It is a man handler however.

I use it for virgin tills. I also have a Mantis for existing beds that really does a surperb job. It is one of those 2 stroke 4 tine jobs that are really light and the tines spin fast.

Once you get some beds together, really think of doing the raised beds.
After they are established in a year or two, they are easy to keep going
without the killer tillers.

my 2 cents

2DB

[timbo]

Front and rear tillers are both kinda self propelled. The tines either pull you through or the rear ones push you.
I have a rear tine (it was given to me) but my druthers are a rear tine. I've used them and they don't kick around like a front tine one.

Saying all that..................I'd go with raised beds. I just put in one last year and it worked great!
Do some research on it Cappy. IIRC you have a bad back. Tillers kick butt when you are healthy. I'm 6-3 and 220 but if I till for over 2 hours, my back really hurts.

What I like about the raised beds is you put in the good soil and fertilizer and it stays in place and not wash away.

We probably will be putting in more of them this spring.

Oh, think of a kids wading pool as a bed for you too. Just poke a lot of holes in the bottom!

I'm going to put that in this spring as well.

[Caplock50]

GoatLady, got a link to Mel Barthalomew's Sq. Ft. Gardening book, web site?

Thanks all.

[goatlady]

Here ya go Cap - I have been using the raised bed/sq.Ft. method for 15 eyars and will NEVER use row gardens ever again. I never made and used Mels' "soil" cause I have plenty of compost available. I started with boughten stuff (compost/cow manure) in bags from Walmart. My 4 x 8 beds take 8-10 bags to start with and then I add 4-6" of compost every year. If you use 1x10x8' boards it will pay to staple weed barrier on the bottoms, flip the beds over, and then fill - you will NEVER have to pull a weed, guy.

http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

http://www.raisedbedgardeningtips.com/

[ColdWater]

Gardening can be easy or labor intensive. I have in the past both raised beds and rows. What I find works best for rows is till the soil real good, going over the same plot 3-4 times. Then take hay bales and separate the pads laying them in rows as neat as possible covering the entire garden. Leave about 2-3 inches of space between the rows of pads. Fill that 2-3 inch space with soil/compost level with the pads and plant seeds/starter plants in the rows. Water with soaker hose for each row. At the end of the year/season let rest till spring and till in the hay bales and replace with new hay. I add chicken manure every couple years and well ground decayed leaves and lime. My plot is 15 X 25 and plenty of veggies. Of course here we grow year round. An occasional frost we cover the plot with plastic for the night.

Hope this helps.

PS, buy or steal/borrow a rear tined tiller. Self propelled is a lotlotlot easier than front tined tiller. Did I say a lot easier.

PPS, Use leaves, grass clippings etc. for ground cover. Newspapers too not colored ones, any thing to make a thick cover to keep weeds at bay and moisture in.

[Petedtom]

And Compost , compost , compost , compost and when you think you have enough, compost some more. Worm casings are a wonder of nature as well. !!!
Did I mention composting ?:-D

[Thunder]

I'll second or third or raised beds, use untreated lumber, compost (manure) make them no wider than 4 feet wide, so you can reach to the middle, no lower than waist high. With my back and knees it is the only way to go. Get good soil evem if you have to import it, lots of manure. Sow radishes, lettuce, beets, most other "small" plants. Tomatoes plant closer to gether than a regular gardem. Square footage needed will be less than 25% of that needed for a regular garden (depending on the percentage of large plants.

[Caplock50]

Thanks all for your replies.


Here's the deal...Sears has a rear tine tiller on sale now. It was $749.00; now it's $589.00...and if I buy it Friday(it's Friday only, too), I'll get another 10% knocked off the price. That'll take it down to about $530.00...before taxes. It's pictured on their website. I believe it's the one they're closing out of.

Right now, I'm only hoping and trying to plant up only about half of the land I have available for farming. If I had something that big and mean, I could maybe farm the whole area. At least, that's my thinking.

Also, if I buy local and from a business(rather than a private owner) and something happens to it, it'll be easier to return to get it fixed...warranty-wise. The 'close-out' business has me a bit worried about the warranty, though. But they do have another that looks about the same and it's not a close-out item, so that should fix that problem and it's also about the same price.

So, what do ya think?

[goatlady]

You can only use the tiller as long as you have gas to power it, Cap. Main reason, besides ease of production, that I switched to raised beds. It's so much easier to protect the crops in a raised bed from insects, sun, varmits, weeds, drought. For my purposes, it's no contest. I have the land area for pretty big row crops and IF it comes to that I'll fire up my Kubota and plow to my heart's content! A big tller, no matter HOW big will beat you to death if you try to "farm" a large area especially when time is critical and crop production is MORE critical. I know it's real hard to grasp the idea of more production from less space but it's really tried and true cause you can plant so much closer using raised beds, the water is not wasted on weeds and walkways, they are real easy to cover for cold protection thereby you can plant out earlier and harvest later, easy to cover to keep those pesky bugs off YOUR food. I just hate to see you spend those hard-earned $$ and be disappointed and have to spend time repairing and walking the rows 3-4-5 times - just to till, cultivate, plant and harvest. You do what you feel comfortable with, guy

[Trinity]

Timbo-- Does the kids pool garden work well? I want to start a garden, but I've never had one before other that tomato plants in pots. I live in Texas, so I should be able to get started soon.

Any advise from anyone would be appreciated. I don't think I want to till up the ground because currently we are renting a house and we can't decide whether we should buy a house at this time.

Thanks

[goatlady]

See the above posts and links about raised beds, trin. They are a perfect way to go for renters - you can take them with you if you move!

[Summerthyme]

Tough call, in many ways. A GOOD Tiller is worth it's weight in gold. A bad one (front tine, in our experience) isn't worth the gas it will take to haul them to the dump.

If you're not trying to feed an army, raised beds are great in many ways. If your soil isn't the best, they are really good- you can concentrate your compost and "goodies" in JUST the soil you're growing things in, which stretches your available compost.

Tillers' costs aren't only limited to the initial investment, unfortunately. You'll need the usual small engine stuff- oil, gas, spark plug, filters. Also, whatever belts or however the drive train is run... they won't wear out fast, but they can wear out. Tines will also need replacing at some point, although we get (expensive) hardened tines for our Troy Bilt and they last about 5 years for a set, using the tiller on about 2 acres of ground.

I can't say our Troy Bilt "beats us up".... I've used it a week after back surgery, while I was in labor, and one handed with a badly separated shoulder. There is a "trick" to it- like everything else!- and you can't start on raw sod or badly compacted ground and figure you're going to get it tilled up 6" deep in one pass! It may take dozens of times over and over- at first.

Once you get it worked up well, though, if you can stay off the soil and keep from compacting it as much as possible, it will be easy from then on.

I will add this- we could probably get away with having the tiller for a week in the spring, and another week in fall. I DO use it to hill up potatoes and to till between the long strips of black plastic mulch we put down for our vines- until the vines start spreading. But I plant most of my garden either in wide rows (which are essentially the same as raised beds, in terms of plant spacing- and requiring hand weeding), or on plastic mulch strips. We put the black plastic strips down about 12" apart... just far enough to shovel dirt from between the rows onto the strip edges to hold them down. And then, I put down paper feed sacks (saved all year from cat and dog food, and all the small livestock feed we get in paper 50# bags) between those plastic rows. In a good year, that pretty well eliminates ALL weeds... Occasional ones will sneak in in small crevices left uncovered, and around the plants transplated in the holes cut in the plastic, but it's a quick job to yank them when they're young.

If you're planning on growing a lot of potatoes or corn... a tiller is going to be valuable.

I personally would watch for a used OLDER troybilt. Parts are still available for them, and the older ones (anything before about 1995... I'm not sure when MBO bought out Troy Bilt, but they were MUCH better machines before that) were built like tanks.

We bought ours in 1981, and it went 18 years without needing any repairs at all. Then the cast iron block Kohler engine threw a rod (no idea how... one of the kids was running it... it never showed any hints of problems, and had been well maintained). We replaced that with a Tecumseh engine, which was a horrible piece of junk. After fighting that engine for 3 years or so, we bought a Robin Subaru 9 hp engine for it. What a GREAT engine those are!! Starts first pull, every single time, barely works up a sweat on the toughest ground.

We had to fix a few smaller items last year, including having our son fabricate a "forward reverse lever"... they wanted over $120 for a stupid steel stick!!, but I see no reason the machine won't last us the rest of our lives.

Summerthyme

[2dollarbill]

Thanks all for your replies.


Here's the deal...Sears has a rear tine tiller on sale now. It was $749.00; now it's $589.00...and if I buy it Friday(it's Friday only, too), I'll get another 10% knocked off the price. That'll take it down to about $530.00...before taxes. It's pictured on their website. I believe it's the one they're closing out of.

Right now, I'm only hoping and trying to plant up only about half of the land I have available for farming. If I had something that big and mean, I could maybe farm the whole area. At least, that's my thinking.

Also, if I buy local and from a business(rather than a private owner) and something happens to it, it'll be easier to return to get it fixed...warranty-wise. The 'close-out' business has me a bit worried about the warranty, though. But they do have another that looks about the same and it's not a close-out item, so that should fix that problem and it's also about the same price.

So, what do ya think?


I'd go with the close out myself. All of Sears equipment like this are made by some other outfit that most repair houses can get parts for. That would not concern me. More bang for your buck.

2DB

[timbo]

I've not tried the kiddy pool myself but several people at TB spoke to it and said it works well.

They leave the pool at ground level and then bank soil around the outside or even just rocks in a decorative way. Then just fill the pool up with soil, compost, fertilizer and mix it in.

Just like a raised bed without the permanence of it. Plus the initial cost is lower buying the pool instead of the wood.

It was cautioned that you have to be sure to make a lot of holes in the bottom for drainage though.
One person IIRC had one and it was several years old.

We have a 'puppy pool' (no kids) and our girls didn't play in it that much so I thought I would give it a try this spring.

[Caplock50]

Ok, I clicked on those links GoatLady provided, and composting caught my attention. I can get and have already gotten some 55 gal. metal drums for free. I got 5 of them, and all it cost me was the time and the gas to go get them. The lids are held on by a metal ring. What I was thinking of is filling one or two with straw, grass clippings, leaves and such, for composting. I could lay it on its side and just roll it every now and then to turn the compost. What have I missed? What am I not considering?

And thanks to you all for your advice. It will all be used to make my decission...tomorrow...Friday,...with its 10% in-store discount.

[greensman]

you can plant in just about anything that will hald soil and drain excess water. take for instance the old toilet in my neighbors yard with flowers growing in the bowl :-D raised beds are nice to have. they require more time initially to build than tilling a garden might, but they pay off in the long term with many advantages. i have a mix of beds and rows. cappy could you pay someone to come in with a tractor and a set of disks. if your starting on new ground it would save lot of time to have the tractor make couple of passes and then bring your bought/rented/borrowed tiller in to really work it smooth. i do this with my garden every spring by borrowing a tractor and a tiller for my 1/2 acre. i am looking to buy a wheel hoe soon to cut on the weeding chores and maybe-if i'm strong enough- to till with. there are limits on what materials you use or how creative you can be in growing your garden. my beds are put together using lumber i salvaged from adeck that was being torn out and i grow my taters in old tires stacked up. good luck!

[2dollarbill]

Ok, I clicked on those links GoatLady provided, and composting caught my attention. I can get and have already gotten some 55 gal. metal drums for free. I got 5 of them, and all it cost me was the time and the gas to go get them. The lids are held on by a metal ring. What I was thinking of is filling one or two with straw, grass clippings, leaves and such, for composting. I could lay it on its side and just roll it every now and then to turn the compost. What have I missed? What am I not considering?

And thanks to you all for your advice. It will all be used to make my decission...tomorrow...Friday,...with its 10% in-store discount.


Cap, composting is GOOD! You need it, Period. But a 55 gallon drum x 3 will get you about ten yards of compost a season, which isn't bad. I love compost, I use exclusivly over store bought fertilizers. The area you were talking about growing in, you'd need a 20 foot hight pile of compost 75 foot in circumference.

Get the tiller, collect all dead vegitation over the season, let it compost, get all kinds of manure folks ask to come have hauled away, in 2 years, you'd have the next best thing to the garden of Eden.

There is a difference to a gardener and a small time farmer. What are you going to be?

2DB

[momof23goats]

Ok, I clicked on those links GoatLady provided, and composting caught my attention. I can get and have already gotten some 55 gal. metal drums for free. I got 5 of them, and all it cost me was the time and the gas to go get them. The lids are held on by a metal ring. What I was thinking of is filling one or two with straw, grass clippings, leaves and such, for composting. I could lay it on its side and just roll it every now and then to turn the compost. What have I missed? What am I not considering?

And thanks to you all for your advice. It will all be used to make my decission...tomorrow...Friday,...with its 10% in-store discount.
put your used coffee grounds in , and for tabel scraps too, to get it going good, and go get you some plain old worms, and throw them in as well, and you can make some really good dirt. I got a couple of piles, of straw, and goats poop, with chicken poop thrown in. now I let it go, for a couple of years, [these are big piles, ], I now have some really fine dirt.oh And get the rear one, you won't be sorry.
when you can, do like I do, every so often get a 5 gallon gas can filled up, take it home, and put it in a drum, or something, and add stamlizer to it. before you know it, you will have 20 or 30 gallons of gas. that will last a long time in a tiller.

[goatlady]

Cap, you're forgetting AIR for the compost! You would have to ruin those barrels by drilling LOTS of holes in them for air to get in to the materials for them to compost properly, not just sit there and slime! I just pile my materials in a "pen" made with pallets, 4' x 20', and let it sit all year and it's ready each Fall and or Spring to put on the garden. I think most of us who compost DO have animals which = bedding which = lots of good compost. That above size pile at 5' high composts down to about 2-3' high when it's ready to go, so it does take a huge amount of materials to get a decent amouint of compost., but you must be able to add something back to your garden soil each year to compensate for what the plants take out each year.

[Caplock50]

Ok, I got a tiller. Not the one I was thinking of though. I got a smaller, front tine jobby. Let's see if I can post a picture of it. It's a dinky little picture but maybe you can get enough from it to tell me I goofed.1225

[2dollarbill]

Cap, your picture doesn't show up for me, anyone else see the pic?

2DB

[Caplock50]

It's a craftsman 900 series, 24 inch tine width, model # 917.299011.

Also, I'd suggest you be very careful shopping at sears. The one I asked for is exactly like the one I got...except it is made only for California. It was around $100.00 cheaper than this one. I think I could have gotten them for false advertizing, because in the sales ad, it didn't say, 'only for California...'. After discounts subtracted and taxes added, this one cost me $418.92. If I can figure out how to do the rebate, I can get 5% of that returned to me...supposedly.

Ah well, I got me a tiller now, and now I'm going to use it. I guess I'll be a bit scarce every now and then for a while.


2dollarbill, what I was wanting to be was a 'small-time farmer'. That's why I wanted to bigger tiller. But, I got to thinking of my condition and decided to keep things (sort of) small for now. Yeah, I understand that there is a difference. I had 'visions of grandeur' of plowing up and planting my whole back acre. But reality hit me and I knew it would turn from 'back acre' to 'backacher' far sooner than I would like and need. This tiller I wound up with will, hopefully, be good enough for the garden I have planned for this year. And, hopefully, it'll be big enough to feed me and a couple of others for a decent amount of time. This years garden is about 120 feet long and about 50, 60 feet wide. SIL gave me, a while back, a really small tiller that I can use for weeding once the garden is up and growing, so no problems there.

Again...thanks everyone for your input. It was really appreciated.

[Caplock50]

Hmmm, it's there for me. I wonder what the problem is?

[timbo]

It's there now Cappy, no problemo.

[2dollarbill]

But reality hit me and I knew it would turn from 'back acre' to 'backacher' far sooner than I would like and need.

Haaa! Cap you crack me up. Good luck with your new toy. Just remember to let that toy know who's boss right off.

2DB

[Caplock50]

Yup, 2, if'n it throws ya, ya jist gotta git back in the saddle an' ride 'em 'till he quits.

Timbo, ya reckon it'll do me?

[Summerthyme]

Oh, D***...

Cappy... I sure don't want to burst your bubble here, but have you ever USED one of those !(@($*!! front tine tillers? Can you find someplace to try it out NOW... so you can take it back if it really won't do the job for you?

We tried one of those (a couple different makes) by renting one for a week. Even with our nice deep loam soil, we just plain gave up after a few hours. Note- we're not precisely yuppie wooses... we're dairy farmers, and at the time we said "ain't no way we can use that POS" hubby was still cleaning out our heifer barn by pitching it out by hand every day (45 animals... a full load of manure, daily).

You have NO idea what a 'backacher" means until you try running a front tine tiller.

Now, maybe they've somehow improved them a lot. I surely hope so. But, really- please, please try the thing out, and be sure it's worth your very hard-to-come-by money.

Summerthyme

[goatlady]

Can you say (kindly, really) focused, single-minded, stubborn? LOL. ST, he really wanted a tiller so he bought one. Expensive lesson learned I think though hopefully it will turn out well for Cappy. I know the feeling well - the mind still thinks young, the body just won't cooperate!

[Summerthyme]

goatlady... oh yeah, I know!! I just really hate to see him waste money on something which may be worse than useless. I know money is really tight for him... but I also know how those blasted tillers feel to run!

Oh well... at least he's got great resources here when he decides raised beds have GOT to be less work! LOL!

Summerthyme (and I do hope I'm wrong)

[Caplock50]

Yep, guilty as charged,..stubborn, hard-headed, and just about anything else you want to toss in there. :mrgreen:

But, in my defense, it's got to be better than the shovel, hoe, rake and that dang dinky push plow I got to work the garden with.

The SIL has already run his farming tractor with the cultivator on it over the area I plan on using. That was several months ago. He's been saying he'll come over and run it all again...but we can't seem to get all things together on the good days for it. With this thing, I won't have to wait for him...like tomorrow. I plan on 'throwing the saddle on this bronc' and seeing what it can do...while he and the grandson go fishing. And it's already almost too late for me to plant any onions here. And I definately need some place to set my tobacco plants out in when they get ready. I got them 'sprouting' right now.

Oh well, as I said, gonna give'r a try tomorrow. I'll give ya'll a report here when I'm done. Going to try to work up two rows.

But, really, thanks, Everyone. Your input was considered and well appreciated.

[Saul Mine]

Even when I was young and strong a front tine tiller could nearly work me to death in half an hour. A rear tine tiller is no more work than just walking behind it. But I suggest you don't buy one. You will only need it once, or at the most once a year, so rent one. But I suggest you don't rent one either. There are many ways to totally eliminate that job. So choose one of those methods and spend your money on something more productive.

[Caplock50]

Well, here I am...a day late, but here. Yesterday it rained a good, drenching rain. The ground was way too wet to work. So, instead, I did house work.

Anyway, today...

"...right after chuck,
I steps out to see if this outlaw can buck.
Down in the horse corral, standin' alone,
is an old caballo, a strawberry roam."

And yep, it can buck, and it can crow-hop, and board-walk,...and it even tried to sun-fish a couple of times. I'm just glad it didn't do its high dive or try to do a death roll.

Still, I got almost half of my garden area reworked. If I'd been doing it by hand, I'd only, maybe, have two rows done, instead....and would be laid up for a week or longer. Yeah, I'm sore and tired, but at least I'm not stove up to where I can't get back at it again tomorrow. It'll be later in the day, though, because, tomorrow, I'm going to go to town and get me some fertilizer. I want to get it worked into the ground before I do any real planting. I'm also going to get some chicken wire for a pen and a coop.

Ok, there's my report. And I think I should have gotten the rear tine one instead. But, I was looking for cheap, and not necessarily easy...although easy *is* one of my main concerns these days.

[goatlady]

Good deal, Cappy. So glad it worked for you after it's fashion.

[contractor909]

I have a Troy-Bilt, 18", self-propelled, solid wheels. This is the second garden tiller that I've owned and I just love this machine. When I dig up fresh lawn, I wait until after a rain and the ground is soft. I mow the grass very short. This Troy-Bilt does the job.

The reason for a narrow width is so that I can till between the rows after planting and throughout the season. It has an easy to start engine. In addition to my garden, I planted four rows of asparagus, each 1/8 mile long last year.

I've also used Roundup the year before to kill off the grass on a piece that I plan on using later. Otherwise I don't use chemicals on a active garden, except for some dust.

I mean, I work this little machine. I keep it clean and change the engine oil often.

Anyway, this one works for me..

[Third Mann]

One thing a front tine may do better is tilling up ground that has just been plowed. A rear tine tiller (small one anyway) will try to spin out before the tines ever get to the pile of untilled dirt. The front tine tiller eats it's way into the chunk of dirt so the wheels have somewhat of a level road to ride on. Both of them are a lot of work though (when tilling plowed ground) That's where a disc comes in ... but then you're packing down the dirt again with the weight of the tractor. Some people fall plow so the ground can "melt" back together before they till in the spring. I don't like to plow if I don't have to and don't need to anymore because I have been improving the soil through the years. The earthworms are my one bottom plows now.


Cappy, if you know anybody close by who feeds hay to cattle in the big bale rings (especially in the same spot for a number of years) there's black gold in them there hills. Find the stuff that looks like black coffee grounds (usually anywhere but the top layer, which still has mostly unrotted hay). It's a good mix of composted hay mixed with manure. The stuff around the perimeter is usually best because it gets better air to it to compost faster.
One drawback though ... you may get a good crop of grass seed in your garden, but well worth it if it means loosening up the ground and getting organic matter in. I don't know what your soil is like, but I know a lot of areas could stand to be blackened up a little bit. You can avoid the grass seed to some extent by piling the manure and letting it heat. Who can wait though ... let the chips fall.