Please allow me to explain some facts about the different types of sand. As a contractor and someone who has worked in a concrete plant you better know what type of snd you need for the job you are doing. With that said lets began. Sand is either dug up in a quarry or dredged from a pond, lake or a sand quarry that they hit a spring in and filled with water. All commercial sand is washed so it can be graded for size and type. You have to go out and dig up your own if you want to get unwashed sand ( which is not recommended for landscaping ) to be used as fill sand or what we call sandbox sand. First thing to fall out of the washer is mason sand. Next is concrete sand followed by fill sand which contains some clay. Next is gravel base and is made-up of lots of clay and small gravel.This is what you typically find on ball diamonds and clay tennis courts or as a base for a gravel driveway or path through your garden. It can be packed down so hard you would think it was concrete with a colored dye in it untill it rains. Dogs, cats, kids and husbands get in quite a bit of trouble when it rains because of this stuff. Next is pea gravel. This can be used to cover the gravel base or partly fill holes like lateral lines where you need good drainage or placed under downspouts to keep the water from making a canyon of you lawn and it gives it a decorative look. Just remember to use something to keep the gravel in place or your mower becomes a machine gun when you mow around It. A lot of people use it in flower beds and around the base of trees too for decorative look. Rock gardens look neat and pea gravel mixed with river rock works well for this. Next comes river rock. Used as I just mentioned in place of the pea gravel ecept not on lateral lines or sewer pipes or any other underground lines and pipes. Although it does work well for drip irrigation or soaker hose. Then the last is river stone. Good for decorative landscaping and filling in wash outs or anywhere you need the water not to erode the ground beneath them.

I apologize for being late to the party, but being a little woman (5'4", 120 lbs) with a little tiller (Mantis) I thought I'd wade right in. My soil is heavy clay. Unless soil conditions are PERFECT for the mantid, it either cannot till at all (bouncing maniacally on the surface), or gets fouled with debris within two minutes. The mantid cannot be used to till in organic matter, whether unbroken sod, live green manure, or dead dried manure in any stage. Anything that is not soil will rapidly wrap itself around the axles of the mantid, forcing you to stop every five minutes to try to remove the debris without burning yourself. You'll need to take off the wheels in the process each time to get to the debris on each side of each wheel. That being said, it does a good job, if you work within its limitations. The soil has to be relatively free of debris, and not wet, but not bone dry, either. You'll need to work back and forth a few times for the tiller to dig down and really turn the soil. I also use the mantid quite a bit to trench areas for irrigation mains and conduit for security cameras. I've also got the edger, which I plan to (but haven't yet attempted) to use to give my garden beds a crisp edge for easier mowing. I have found that I can start the mantid quite easily, and control the bucking adequately. One has to have a strong spirit to fight with the bucking beast at times, however.

I personally never tried separated and re-rooting Lithops heads apart. Hopefully never have to do so, since very few people seem to have done it before on the internet. Rehabilitation of etiolated Lithops is quite difficult I hear as well. Tough process that requires a lot of patience and possibly two years. Life as a Lithops grower can be quite difficult and challenging sometimes. Often nobody else will have the 'right' answer for you. I think that's partly why so many people enjoy growing them, because they are not so simple.

Tilling of soils (as I'm sure dchall will reiterate) results in bumpy, uneven surfaces that lose their drainage and puddle water until they restore themselves. The bumpiness never restores itself properly and one is generally stuck with that forever. Tilling is fine in a garden where evenness doesn't matter (but that destruction of proper drainage and soil structure still happens). However, the tiller will dig much deeper in some areas, not as deep in others, and result in uneven soil and denser or not as dense areas that are higher and lower and bumpy. That'll result in the mower bouncing when you mow, an uneven mow, and a very, very unpleasant experience mowing. Trust me. It's just not worth it. For your leaves, rake them to break them up before installing sod, or rake to remove as much as possible and expose the soil surface. Tedious, yep. But that's the proper method. Burying those results in them decomposing underground, which is yet another problem. That will steal oxygen from the soil, and that's another bad thing in that grass roots only go where there's oxygen. Until the leaves finish decomposition, grass roots won't easily penetrate that layer. One-inch roots aren't sufficient for survival.