Hi neohippie, I think you visited one of my threads with photos of my raised beds. I'm not sure which one, but you can look at the attached link to get an idea of what I'm talking about. I just got back into gardening last year. The wife and I had spent a few summers in Colorado escaping the Texas heat. We decided to stay home last summer and our daughter said she wanted me to start growing some of those great tomatoes I used to grow. For years as we moved around, I was a sometimes container gardener and a sometimes raised bed gardener. I went back to raised bed gardening because it is so easy to get a crop in the ground without a lot of soil prep. and without a lot of highly technical know how. I live about sixty miles north of Dallas. We have a hard red clay soil base. I put my first two beds in at the end of a draught last year. The ground was so hard that we couldn't even drill into the clay with a large tractor mounted drill. I built the first two beds in less than a day, added dirt mixed with composted manure, sphagnum peat moss, sand (for looseness) and some commercial 10-10-10 fertilizer. I didn't do anything to the base soil other than turn it over with a shovel and pick to mix in the new dirt. I filled the new beds almost to the top knowing that it would settle a lot. I planted my plants the next day. My family and friends enjoyed tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash all summer. I don't know what part of Central Texas you live in, but in North Texas; we do have a spring and fall growing season. My garden just hangs on without dieing during the hottest part of the summer and then recovers at summers end and produces until the first frost. I think they have to replant for the fall season in the Houston area because the heat and humidity is so intense. I think you can at least get a fall crop planted if you want to. Yours will probably grow almost to the New Year. Good Luck Ted Here is a link that might be useful: My raised beds

I agree with canguy, counter-rotating tines are best left to breaking new ground. My tillers are a Troy-bilt horse and a Mantis. A friend has one of the newer and cheaper Pony 'Troy-bilt' tillers, he's very pleased. However, I'd agree with canguy - a mini-tiller can do a lot of work AND do some things the larger ones can't. Here there is good dealer support for Mantis, they're a well-tried product, and mine works great. Maybe take them up on their 1 year trial offer?

And will they ever ! An idea : This would be for a "small" 9 x 12 garden.. Establish the garden the previous year by covering it with plastic and bricks, maybe an old rug. Then use the small Mantis type to till in all the dead grass. This still a lot of work, but the Mantis can be used for culivating.. Just an idea... You can also buy a Troy-Built used, these are far better than the Roto-Hoe (which I have)....

I now agree with everyone's assessment that the Mantis is not a tiller. But I didn't know that when I bought it. Mantis told me it would break up my hard-as-concrete, high clay content ground that hasn't been plowed since God created the firmament. In the spring of 2011, Tilling that ground bounced around me and the tiller for two days. The tines are worn away. The gearbox is leaking grease. I originally thought the carb was fried because I used gasoline with ethanol. I bought a new carb but that didn't solve the problem. Last fall, I used shovels to turn up chunks of the sod, and then ran the Mantis through the chunks. This spring I rented a full sized rear tined tiller and replowed the garden and broke new ground for other flower and vegetable beds. Do you think that the Mantis can prepare the ground for planting twice a year now that it has been tilled? I've added quite a bit of organics to the clay soil each of the past three seasons.. Or would I always need to use a full sized tiller first? I'm wondering if I should send back the tiller to Mantis at my expense for their assessment? Maybe they'd cover it under warranty. But by looking at it, I would kind of doubt it. I think the tiller is shot. And I am unsure if they are going to honor the repair under warranty.