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Fw: [GardeningOrganically] Tillers

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

Hi Gary,

You asked: "Hey Frank, should I buy the mini Mantis tiller for my mini
garden?"

The short answer is no, not in my opinion. Some of the reasons follow below;
others include the high cost, the carcinogenic  pollution from the two
stroke engine, and the fact that you can mix soil the one first time in a
garbage can.

Mel Bartholemew, the guru of Square Foot Gardening, says it pretty well
also:

"Rototillers look as if they are doing a wonderful job, but they don't go
very deep."----Cash from Square Foot Gardening, 1985, Alpine Press, ISBN
0-88266-395-X, P. 154

I am putting in a 5 foot by 16 foot raised bed this spring, and first of all
I am removing all the perennial plants and weeds, including quackgrass and
pepperment, by sifting the soil through a 1/2 inch Cantopper sifter over ye
old Rubbermaid trash can on wheels.

Rototilling quackgrass or peppermint just wouldn't work, but by careful
digging with a Garden Claw and a fork I am able to place all of the bad
weeds on the screen without breaking off much in the way of roots.

Since this bed will be my root crop bed I am making it as Mel recommends,
using peat moss and vermiculite added to compost and the original soil; he
also has a nifty idea for growing in your Southwestern soils, the New York
Times garden, illustrated and discussed on pages 156-157.

If you keep supplying compost and other organic matter to your soil after
initial preparation, you should have no need to rototill or otherwise
disturb the soil after the intial preparation is done, as the merry soil
community Bio-Tillage Workers Association should keep it well in hand, as
they have since time immemorial.

Feed the Soil, and watch out for those fires, eh?

Yours,

Frank Teuton
-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Teuton <fteuton@total.net>
To: GardeningOrganically@onelist.com <GardeningOrganically@onelist.com>
Date: Friday, June 04, 1999 4:31 PM
Subject: Re: [GardeningOrganically] Tillers


>Hi Grace,
>
>As I see it tillers have some valid uses.  One is in destroying existing
>weed cover on a large garden; for example, here in the North, quackgrass,
>Agropyron repens (now Elytrigia repens, I think) is a terrible weed and it
>takes a whole year of tilling, then cover cropping buckwheat, then tilling
>again, more buckwheat, and finally tilling and planting cereal rye. Between
>all the tillage, the buckwheat smothering, and the rye allelopathy, the
>quackgrass generally gives up the ghost and you have a clean field for
>planting after tilling in the cereal rye the following spring.
>
>Ruth Stout had a terrible time with quackgrass (witch grass) and dug a
>trench around her garden to keep it out, after removing it all by
>hand---mulch will not stop it.
>
>A second reason to till is when one has a very poor soil and wishes to
>distribute compost, and especially rock phosphate, evenly throughout the
top
>six inches or so of soil. This, in my opinion, is a one time thing, as is
>the need to destroy difficult perennial weeds, and can be accomplished on a
>small to medium scale using hand tools, such as a good garden fork
> www.leevalley.com has good quality and prices) or a Garden Claw.
>
>Personally I have owned mini-tillers, as well as a big Italian rear-tine
>tiller. I would not have one again except for the above two uses, and I
>would rent for that.
>
>A Garden Claw is a much superior tool for weed removal and for mixing in
>amendments, compared to a small power tiller, for these reasons:
>
>1) You can use it gently to loosen running roots like quackgrass and
>bermuda, and remove almost all the plant at one time---the others will
leave
>many small bits behind, which can sprout and regrow the weed problem.
>
>2) It acts vertically and does not mix the soil layers as much, which means
>less disruption of the normal soil life. It also kills less earthworms.
>
>3) Its gentler action and round tines break up the soil agreggate structure
>MUCH much less, than a hi-speed powered soil churn like the Mantis. This
>means the soil will recover its natural resilience and biological good
>health much faster after a Clawing than it will after a rototilling.
>
>4) It costs and weighs one tenth of what a small power tiller does, runs
>quietly, and is fume-free---two stroke exhaust is yucky stuff!
>
>The best discussion of this I have seen is in Eliot Coleman's The New
>Organic Grower, revised and expanded edition, 1995, Chelsea Green, ISBN
>0-930031-75-X, Chapter 9, Tillage. Coleman is a hardnosed anti-weed guy,
who
>uses a rototiller, yet he knows what a bit of reflection would indicate to
>all of us---that nature's own systems produce superb soil structure, and
>that tillage has a job to do, and once that job is done, should be done as
>little as possible on an as-needed basis.
>
>Ruth's books are wonderful and I recommend them. I just got my own copy of
>Gardening Without Work, reprinted 1998, The Lyons Press ISBN 1-55821-654-5,
>which is her last book; her first is How to Have a Green Thumb Without an
>Aching Back. In the local library or bookstore.....:-)
>
>Frank---a time for every purpose under heaven, even for rototilling, but
>this can easily be overdone, he thinks....
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Grace Carter <cec@volcano.net>
>To: GardeningOrganically@onelist.com <GardeningOrganically@onelist.com>
>Date: Friday, June 04, 1999 4:03 PM
>Subject: [GardeningOrganically] Tillers
>
>
>>From: Grace Carter <cec@volcano.net>
>>
>>Why on earth do you want to use a tiller? Take a look at some books like
>>Ruth Stout's No-Work Gardening or The No-Till Garden Book and see all the
>>advantages of not tilling. Look into some permaculture web sites or books,
>>too. Tilling causes more problems than it solves.
>>Grace & Bob  <cec@volcano.net>
>>Calaveras County, CA  USDA zone 7
>>
>>
>>

>>
>


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