I garden in downtown Atlanta, my garden acts easily as a zone 8 garden and it is BLAZING HOT, no shade, facing south and east. Everything does just dandy for me! Prepare soil well so it retains water, mulch very well and water when needed. I actually don't water all that frequently and everything is fine. Cowpeas, yard long beans, bush beans, lima beans, okra, malabar spinach, butternut squash, luffa, sweet and hot peppers, eggplants, various melons and tomatoes all do fine. I grow Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, sungold, green zebra, Juliette, Taxi, Jubilee, Rutgers, Marlglobe, and many more different tomatoes but these are the ones I grow pretty much every year. Most of the heirlooms I vary simply to try new tastes every year. Tip: Grow sweet peppers in the shade of tomatoes. A local farmer taught me this and it works like a charm. I've increased my pepper harvests greatly and never get any burn. Insects and disease are more challenging than that heat.

So much information is missing from your post, I'm afraid. - what year is this tractor? - did you own it since new? - how many hours are showing on the clock? - is the hourmeter still working? - how METICULOUS were you in maintaining this tractor? Your DH may want a larger deck but is a 72" deck practical, considering the terrain? The larger the width of the deck, the more prone it is to scalping off any high spots it encounters. Most decks are of the "full-floating" type which means they have gauge wheels on them that contact the ground all the time and those wheels are what keep the deck off the ground at a preset height. If one of those wheels drops into a low spot, then the deck also drops on that corner or side. The closer the cut, the more critical this becomes on uneven ground. This fact also makes it hard to get a really nice even cut with a wide deck. Whether to rebuild or not rebuild is a decision that only the two of you can make. Right now, your 2072 is worth next to nothing. It's a parts tractor that might bring you a couple hundred dollars. The questions I posed at the beginning of my post will help you decide the best course of action. If you and your DH are the type of people who buy tractors and never read the Operator's Manual and never follow the recommended service procedures, then your tractor may not be worth putting an engine into it because the hydro may be the very next item to fail. If you've racked up more than 3000 hours on the clock, then once again, replacing the engine might not prove to be a wise move. This is no different than deciding whether to put an engine in the family car or pick-up truck. How old is the vehicle, how many miles on the odometer, did we look after it well, has it seen a hard life or an easy one, what's its overall condition like and so on? The engine IS the most expensive item but the hydro follows close behind at about half the cost. Then there is the issue of the existing mowing deck. Is it beat to death? Is it rusting out? A new deck can easily cost a $1000.00 or more. I've given you a link for an engine source. Personally, I would repower the tractor with the Honda instead of the Kohler. As far as ZTR's are concerned, they have two things going for them. Several are available with a 72" deck and they have the capability of travelling at a higher ground speed than most conventional garden tractors. However....... if your property has really rough ground, then you might not be able to put up with driving one that fast and if so, then there goes the major edge of a ZTR on properties with large, wide open spaces. The third thing that ZTR's have going for them is their ability to quickly maneuver around obstructions and turn around in their own space. From what I can gather, those factors don't apply to your property. As good as ZTR's are at cutting grass, you won't be pulling a single-furrow turning plow, discs, harrows and some other ground-engaging tools that require high ground clearance and an implement hitch on the rear. In other words, ZTR's are not as versatile as a garden tractor is. Lastly, we come to that nasty thing called "budget" and everyone has one. For sure, you need a bona fide garden tractor for your property or you need a commercial quality ZTR in order to get longevity. Currently, all the manufacturers are jumping on the ZTR bandwagon due to customer demand for affordable models. The PROBLEM is this. Affordable units are constructed with parts that cost less to manufacture and therefore, don't last very long before needing replacement. This is really important in a ZTR because they use TWO hydraulic pumps and TWO hydraulic drive motors whereas a garden tractor has one of each. As such, a low-end ZTR will become instant junk when one of the motors or pumps fail because more often than not, they are connected to a common oil reservoir. That means, shrapnel from a badly damaged motor or pump can get circulated into the rest of the system, depending upon how the system is designed and filtered. Realistically, I think your budget should be at least six grand. Frankly, Cub Cadet is a brand that no longer impresses me. It is made by MTD and they have never impressed me as a manufacturer. In my opinion, you would be better served by your local Deere dealer and an X series. Another choice would be an Ingersoll dealer if you could find one close to you. Go to http://www.ingersolltractors.com and use their dealer locater tool. This may be a brand that you have not heard of but originally it was developed by J. I. Case before they sold it. The tractors produced today still have all the quality and ruggedness that Case engineered into them under their stewardship and Ingersoll has only made them better since acquiring the line. Think it over and let us know what you finally decide to do. Here is a link that might be useful: Engine

I would buy a Craftsman 6500, I hear they can pull a trailer house up a mountain and push 15 foot piles of snow. They are "real" GT's. P.S. Good luck with receiving much help from people you have jerked around with for the past few months!

Hi CJ, I created a food garden in similar conditions two years ago with great results, and thought I'd share what I did... To begin I dug out the area (I chose a circle about 15 feet in diameter for the garden), and like you, I hit impossibly hard substrate less than a foot down. I mixed the loosened top layer of soil with a few bags of topsoil, manure, and some of the organic material under salvaged dead pinyon pines. I then fenced the area in, of course, mulched like crazy with straw, and hooked up some hose from my washing machine to give it graywater (not actually supposed to be used for vegetable gardening, but that's ridiculous unless you're washing soiled diapers). With that thick layer of straw, all the necessary moisture is retained between laundry loads (using appropriate biodegradable detergent only of course), and any plants that cannot grow up through the straw from seed are started indoors, hardened off, and transplanted into the garden. I would discourage raised beds anyway, as they don't benefit from the moisture-retentive and temperature-mediating properties of the ground. Also, rainwater cannot flow into a raised bed, only out of it. Sunken basins are much more appropriate for this climate (check out the book "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands" by Brad Lancaster, which goes into detail about this, as well as has a chapter on ancient Native American gardening methods). So, my three tips for gardening here would be: 1. Keep it small, this allows much more control over every part of the process, increasing yields. 2. Mulch like crazy... Oh, did I mention I have never had to pull weeds from my garden? 3. Pay attention to the weather and animals to minimize plant losses. Good luck to you!