Rototiller question

[TZ-OH6]

I have a new hand dug clay clod+compost garden and I'm debating whether or not to rent a tiller to break up the clods in the fall. The problem is that the soil has a lot of sandstone fragments ranging isn size from the palm of your hand on down (most of the larger rocks have been taken out). Is a tiller going to bind up on the rocks every few minutes? or will the flat rocks some how make it through?

[levad]

if there is moisture in it, the clay might break up easier after a hard freeze. the stuff here crumbles in the spring...almost looks like kitty litter. but i dont know if a tiller would break the clods.

[dice]

A foot thick mulch might do more for it than tilling it in the
fall, unless you have more soil amendments that you need
to mix in (rock phosphate, granite dust, organic amendments
that need a season to break down, and so on).

See

http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda%2...dments%202.pdf

for some surprising results with just mulch over packed, mostly
clay soil.

[TZ-OH6]

Ok, forget I ever mentioned clay, will rocks bind up a rototiller?

[JerryL]

TZ

I have a Troy Built Horse Garden Tiller:

•

Forward-rotating tines for premium garden soil preparation
•
Cast-iron transmission with bronze gear drive
•
4 forward, 1 neutral and 2 reverse speeds
•
20" tilling width
•
12" tine diameter
•
Adjustable tilling depth up to 8"
•
Standard power take-off (PTO)
•
Just One Hand operation for easy maneuverability
•
16" ag tires
•
Full-sided tine shields for operator protection
•
Accepts a wide variety of optional attachments
•
2 year limited manufacturer's warranty - refer to online owner's manual for exclusions
•
Limited lifetime warranty on transmission
•
305cc/13.5 ft-lbs gross torque* Briggs & Stratton Powerbuilt engine with 2 year manufacturer's warranty
•
*ft-lbs gross torque per SAE J1940 as rated by engine manufacturer @ 3060 rpm

Nothing short of Gibraltar stops it. It has been known to ‘grab hold of a rock’ and throw me across the garden. But bind-up? NO WAY!!

[dice]

If the point is just to break up the clods, what is going to
keep them from becoming one big clod again by spring,
as rain washes through it and compacts the soil in the bed?
(Hence the mulch suggestion.)

[Medbury Gardens]

Could you not put all the soil rocks and all through a large screen to remove them??
Richard

[TZ-OH6]

Thanks for the replies,


Sieving is out, there is 1000 sq ft of garden dug down from 16-40 inches, and the clay gooballs often have a rock in the middle, and are either to dry-hard or too wet-plastic to be broken up by a sieve.


The soil is ultraheavily ammended with composted woodchips, with more to come. There is a decent amount of sand in the sediment so once organic matter is added and the clay is broken up the soil becomes very friable. Unfortunately we had a very wet spring and I had to shovel-mix the compost into wet soil so there are a lot of softball to baseball sized clay gooballs coated in black compost. Some of the clay balls are pure greasy blue-gray clay, but most are yellow clay due to the red sandstone sand content. The bestway to break them up by hand is to get them on the surface let them dry for a couple of days and whack them with a shovel to shatter them. A tiller can cut them up and coat them with compost if they are not dry enough to crumble.

It sounds like a tiller will work for me. I dont' mind if the tiller beats me up, as long as I don't have to stop every two minutes to unbind it because of a little rock.

[Worth1]

My tiller breaks shear pins in hard round metamorphic rocks.
in time you can just use a hard rake and get rid of the rocks as they come to the top and they will come to the top.

Just keep piling on the compost and sandy loam and after a while you will have a nice garden.

Worth

[tomakers]

The area I live in is known as "Rock Village". There are a LOT of rocks, anywhere from the size of a baseball to almost head size. Over the last 35 years I have removed most of them from my garden. The only tillers I used that could handle the rocks without binding up were a Troy Built and a BCS (even more expensive). AND they will still jump when you find a good size rock. EVERY front tine tiller I borrowed or rented was a PIA removing rocks stuck between the tines and the shield.
That said, I think you should put down a foot of mulch and go from there. The rocks will rise to the top.
JMO,
Tom

[dice]

You could do a test: take a small section and just put a foot
of mulch on it over the winter; take another small section
and grow a thickly seeded winter cover crop on it (half and
half winter rye and hairy vetch, for example, or whatever
is recommended in your part of the country for that, with
maybe an inch of compost on top of broadcast seeds);
cultivate the rest with your original plan.

Then turn over a few shovels full in mid-spring and compare
the soils. The thick mulch helps natural processes form
aggregates in the soil with larger air spaces between them
than smaller particles of either clay or humus. The cover
crop fills the soil with roots. Grow a couple of plants next
year in the test sections and compare their performance
to those in the fall-cultivated bed.

Adding gypsum or lime, depending on pH, will also help
improve the structure of clay soils. (One should get a soil
test first, to see if it really needs more calcium.)

[TZ-OH6]

I have fruit-heavy, 6-7 ft tall tomatoes plants growing in it now, so I don't think it can get much better other than to break up the remaining clods and mix them in better. The ground consists of about 25% volume composted wood chips to a depth of 14 inches (down to 36 inches in one plot), with 10 cubic yards more composted chips to be mixed in next spring, so I'm not worried about soil structure, organic content or nutrients.

[dcarch]

My soil was terrible when I first started my garden. The builder dumped all the rocks, stones and crap just below the surface. My small tiller was useless until I did this:
http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=4011&page=2&highlight=dig
Go the second page and the last pages to see the video.
I have gotten all the rocks out and compost all the way down to as deep as 3” to 4” deep. My plants are now growing like crazy.

Please don’t do what I did unless you have good enough experience in this kind of stuff. You dig?
dcarch

[TZ-OH6]

I do love a good souped up powertool with maiming capabilities. If I were to start over, my wood chipper guy told me that they let idiots with no training rent little bobcat-like backhoes by the day that will let you dig deep enough into hard soil.