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Carolina Gardening Landscape Design

Do you have a tiller? If so, what do you have?

6 years ago

Due to the scale of what I'll want to do when we buy a house, I'm thinking I should probably invest in a tiller. We are only looking for homes that are 1 acre + and I plan to amend existing soil as well as build raised beds.

There are some serious tillers I've seen, and some get pricey too. If you have one, do you recommend it? What do you have? I've never owned a tiller before. Then again, I've never dealt with red clay before either.

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Comments (2)

gaylek
6 years ago
I have a Troy-Built tiller and love it. Even I (73 yr old) can easily use it. Small for a tiller but does the work for me. It has a charger that easily starts it (I couldn't pull the cord to start) . Can adjust the depth of tilling.
dowlinggram
6 years ago
If you are using raised beds you don't need a tiller. It would be impossible to use it in raised beds. I use a garden claw and it works great in good soil but wouldn't work in clay. I suggest you make your beds and fill them with good soil because clay takes a lot of amending to make a good growing medium but is fine and holds moisture under a layer of good loam. If you need a tiller occasionally you can rent them by the day.

When we first moved to our house the soil was all clay. We did buy a tiller because we wanted a garden(not raised beds). We moved in late summer and that fall and let it be known that we would rake leaves if we could keep them. We spread them on the ground and tilled them in. The next summer we planted our garden and what a dismal failure it was. Plant roots have a hard time growing in clay. It took 3 years of raking and tilling and amending the garden with what compost we made and old manure(fresh manure has lots of weed seeds)before we got a decent garden
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