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| Not sure this is the correct forum. Please direct me to the correct place if not.
We recently bought a place with an acre. I want to cultivate nearly 1/4 of that for a garden. Currently growing is bermuda grass - not very well because the ground is dried out clay soil. I am wanting to "dig/till" it all up and make beds. I am even considering using a cover crop to help break up the ground first. What do I use? Plow, tiller, disc cultivator? I will need to make a purchase of this equipment, so if I can get away with using just one item, all the better. I have been looking a little, and it seems that I could eliminate a need for a plow as a tiller will dig up the soil anyway. Not sure the different uses for a tiller and a disc cultivator. Also, what websites are good for locating used attachments? I am finding it hard to find anything with a sleeve/brinly hitch. |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by KubotaMaster 7A-Arkansas (My Page) on Sat, Jul 21, 12 at 21:22
| Ummm tilling is the worst thing you want to do if you want a level lawn. Tilling makes the ground unlevel and leaves big clumps when it settles a box blade is best this is not my area of expertise i would suggest reposting here---> http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/lawns/ and maybe member (texas-weed) will help you further. If you are wanting to keep the bermuda grass. And as far as the landscape goes try here---> http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/design/ and a good website would be craigslist sometimes you get good stuff granted you may have to buy the entire piece of equipment. |
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| I'm guessing you want a vegetible garden. A plow will turn over the soil and leave larger clods which a disc will break up. This is the process used for larger farms as it is most economical. For smaller gardens, a tiller producess the same result in one action. You probably will want a motorized pull behind tiller (slip sleeve implies no PTO). New costs about $1500+. A used Garden tractor pull behind plow and disc can be found on Craig's List for $200-500 each. |
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| I highly recommend you use a herbicide on the bermuda grass before you do any cultivation. Multiple applications may be necessary. Cultivation just makes bermuda grass grow better! If you don't get rid of it now, you'll be fighting it from now on. If you are talking about establishing a vegetable garden, you probably would want to check out the Vegetable Gardening forum here on GardenWeb. It already has a wealth of recent info on establishing new vegetable gardens. |
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- Posted by tomfifield (My Page) on Sun, Jul 22, 12 at 9:59
| As said you will need to kill that grass first, a tiller will do a good job. Go over the area a few times and go a bit deeper each time, on the last pass go slow and this will make the break up will and make it smooth. Do you have a tractor with a 3 point and PTO? If so what HP? I have a 35HP and I have a 5' tiller for it. I do not think you need to spend so much on a tiller for the small garden you plan. If you do not have a tractor you can rent one for about $180 a day, this will make your job easy. If you rent a walk behind tiller or buy one get a rear tine one or you will kill your self trying to work the front end kind. I have both kinds and do not even use the front end one any more. |
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- Posted by tomfifield (My Page) on Sun, Jul 22, 12 at 10:06
| A photo of some of my yard tractors and stuff. Seeing how this link post works, I am new to it. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Lawn tractors
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| Aww geez! You pretty much got what you need for gardening right there in the Kubota and the tiller. A turning plow would be helpful for breaking open the soil and the tiller can do the clod busting. But if you go successively deeper with just the tiller, first setting it shallow for "skinning the surface", and doing the entire garden area. Then set it deeper and go over the plot again. Finally setting it to the deepest it will go to get the job finished. Be sure to have an ample supply of "shear bolts" on hand as you will probably break quite a few encountering rocks. Find out ahead of time what size shear bolts the PTO shaft uses (probably a 1/4" or 5/16" dia). Buy them as Grade 2 or Ungraded bolts at a hardware store or farm store. DO NOT under any circumstances use a bolt graded 5 or 8. Those grades will not break when a rock locks up the tines but something else will break in the tiller drive train instead. If that happens, your garden produce will become very expensive and not so tasty. I will also say that the conditions on the day you shot that pic are................"too wet to plow". |
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- Posted by twelvegauge 8 (My Page) on Sun, Jul 22, 12 at 13:32
| emepro, I think that the simple answer to your question is: A tiller - in your case, a big, heavy tiller. But I don't recommend buying one. I suggest that you rent a tiller instead - as the owner of a TroyBilt Horse (big tiller) and a Honda FG100 (small tiller), I can state that I would be money ahead if I rented. And then I wouldn't have to service and repair them, and reserve space to store them. A quarter of an acre is a large area to garden - that would be about 100 feet by 100 feet. Huge. I don't think I've ever gardened more than 2,500 sq. ft., and that was a LOT of work. To prepare for tilling, it would be good to use herbicide on the bermuda grass to try to kill the roots. After the grass is dead, mow off the top as short as you can. Till the soil when it is slightly moist - if it's too wet it will gum up on your tiller blades, and if it's too dry it will clump up into clods. Don't try to till it at maximum depth in one pass - make at least two - say till 1/2 depth east-to-west, then full depth north-to-south. Rake out all of the roots and other residue as best you can. It would be convenient to have your own cultivator-size tiller, such as the small Echo, Honda, or Mantis to control weeds between your crop rows. This can be done with a good hoe (like a Pro Hoe), but hoeing 1/4 acre would be a physical test for Charles Atlas. A good quality small tiller will run you about $350. (In my area, renting a big tiller to handle the initial prep work costs about $60 for 1/2 day.) At the end of the growing season, you might need to rent the big tiller again to root out the old crop and prepare to plant a winter crop of rye grass, but if you've got pretty good soil, you might get by using the small (cultivator) type tiller. Late summer would be a good time to start preparing for next summer's garden. If you could get the soil thoroughly tilled and plant a cover crop of rye, you would be in good shape next year. |
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| Lots of good info in these posts. If you've tilled with a view to making a lawn, you'll have to level it or curse the bumps and holes forever more. A simple leveling drag can be built out of some scrap lumber and a log chain. It will dump the high spots into the low spots and work very well. The best leveling drag I've ever seen was an old exposed spring from a bed. The matress and spring without the mattress. Haven't seen one of those in years however. If you're going to have a quarter acre garden, strongly suggest you get a walk behind tiller to run between the rows. With a quarter acre you can space the rows wide enough to avoid root damage. A front tine tiller would work well in that application. Front tine tillers used to break new ground is a gross misapplication of them and has given rise to all the "bad press." I'd stay away from the small hondas, mantis, etc. and just go with a "generic" front tine with a 4 cycle engine, you can add or subtract tines to control tilling/cultivation width and the drag stake will control depth. Just my two cents. Good luck, Ev |
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| Thanks for all the replies. Yes, that is the size (more about 85x110), and it will be a vegetable and fruit garden. Some of that is dedicated to fruit trees, fruiting shrubs and vines that are permanent, like grapes. So, the concensus is to rent a tiller. I have a small lawn tractor, so I thought if it'd cost me half the cost to buy used just to rent one time, might as well buy used and have it whenever I want it. I had planned to make the paths as grass and wide enough for the mower, lining the edge with pavers so some such. I have more thinking to do. Thanks for all the thoughtful replies! I will cross-post in the vegetable garden forum. Emepro |
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| Tomfifield, I have a small John Deere 100 series. So, it is a sleeve hitch. I have seen that agri-fab makes a tiller that has the right hitch. Thoughts on that? emepro |
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| Heck, is that egg on my face again? I misread the post with the link to a picture and I thought tomfifield was the OP. My opinion now is: Tomfifield.....you are good to go with all your stuff. Emepro, yeah, you should rent a tiller. |
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- Posted by bill_kapaun Z8 Orygun (My Page) on Sun, Jul 22, 12 at 16:47
| You might want to call around and see what it would cost to have someone with a BIG tractor/tiller to do the initial job. It might be cost effective, doing packed clay soil vs beating yourself and equipment to death |
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| I was thinking you had a garden tracter, the sleeve hitch reference threw me. A lawn tractor will not pull a plow or disc or even a powered tiller for very long if at all. |
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| Agri-fab makes one that is designed to go behind an ATV or riding mower. Would it not really work as marketed? |
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- Posted by twelvegauge 8 (My Page) on Sun, Jul 22, 12 at 17:52
| First, Bill Kapaun has a darn good idea - if you can find somebody who will do a good job (meaning he should make multiple passes over the ground.) Second, your 100-series Deere is a LAWN tractor, not a GARDEN tractor. It is not intended to handle ground-engaging equipment - even a self-powered tiller. It would probably do it, but you'd be over-stressing the machine. Third, please consider tilling in something to help break up the clay. Sphagnum moss would be really good, but would be quite an investment. Any compost material, leaves, grass clippings will help. |
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| emepro, I understand where you are comming from. The problem is the JD 100. First, turf tires are not going to cut it, your going to need knobby or bar tires. In a plowed field, those tires are going to put additional stress (in addition to the weight and resistance of the ground engaging equipment) on the axels and tranny. The JD 100 has either a hydro or a geared tranny. If it's the hydro, it's a low end Hydrogear or Tufftorq. Neither can take prolonged stress and the heat build-up and the cost of replacement is prohibitive. You may get lucky and everything works out fine, but the odds are steeply stacked against it. |
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| Okay, I guess I'm confused. :D My JD is a 22 HP. The agri-fab - just one example I've found - only requires mowers or atv's with 12 hp or greater. This is where being a girl gets me. LOL! Seems like I should have plenty of mower for the tiller. What am I missing? Someone mentioned tires. I'll look at that. Thanks for talking me through this! |
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| The point of GARDEN tractor versus LAWN is very much a "modern day" concept, and a very valid one. There was a time in history where many GARDEN tractors had 8 to 14 horse power. But the frames and gear train on those beasts were heaveee dooty! The modern day price point marketing strategy has rendered anything that says "Lawn tractor", "Yard tractor", or riding mower to be just barely adequate for that title. Now, of course Agrifab wants you to believe you can do all those things with a common lawn tractor or ATV. Longevity of the tractor frame is more the issue than motive horse power when it comes to lifting the tiller for travel off the ground. Making turns with the tiller buried up in the soil also puts significant stresses on the tractor frame. |
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| I really cannot explain why AgriFab recommends a min hp rating for a non-PTO driven attachment. Maybe someone else has that answer. No issue with you being female. Females ask questions, guys learn the hard way. When's the last time you heard a woman say "Watch this!"? I hope this isn't demeaning, but a lawn tractor is like a small handheld electric mixer and a garden tractor is lake a KitchenAid countertop mixer. The handheld works fine for what it was designed for like whipping eggwhites or batter for 6 pancakes, the countertop will do that too, but it is also built to mix bread dough. You may be able to mix one or two loafs of bread dough with the handheld (if you don't break your wrist), but eventually (sooner than later) the handheld is going to break. Not because of the motor size but because the rest of its parts and gears. HP isn't the controlling factor with tractors, the power and strength is also in the transmission, axels and frame. There are plenty of 12hp Wheelhorse tractors out there that will outpull most 22, 24, or even 28hp lawn tractors to Moscow and back. Is your JD 100 an automatic or do you shift gears like a manual transmission? |
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- Posted by justalurker 10 (My Page) on Sun, Jul 22, 12 at 20:58
| Short answer is that if you hook a pull behind tiller on your JD 100 you'll rip the transmission out of it and grabbier tires will accelerate your transmission failure. You have a riding lawn mower, not a tractor. If you don't believe us then go to the John Deere web site and look up your JD 100 and see what accessories and attachments are listed for it. Read your owner's manual and see what it says about ground engaging attachments. There's a lot more to tractoring than just horsepower and once you want to ground engage in any way the game changes DRAMATICALLY and equipment requirements escalate.. |
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| Okay, thanks for the input. I was thinking JD didn't have this sort of attachment listed because they didn't make it, not because it wouldn't work. LOL! Now I know it's because it doesn't work. So, I'm rethinking my strategy. But, I have another attachment question, so still valid for this forum. :D Could I use the blade that is made for my JD (gift from in-laws so it's not going anywhere) to scoot/push around premium dirt I have delivered? It's listed as a snow blade, but it also says "loose materials." |
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| Lol. Perfect. You are going to run into the same issues, but this gives you the chance to do the guy thing of learning by doing. Put the blade on and see how much dirt you can push before you hear the tractor straining or the tires loose traction. Do be careful NOT to damage the tranaxle (transmission). You still haven't said if you have a manual stick or an automatic style tranny. You are about to find out how little work a JD 100 is capable of and learn first hand what we are talking about. (BTW, if you move small amts at a time, you aren't likely to do any permanent damage--but that is not part of the learning curve here.) |
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- Posted by justalurker 10 (My Page) on Mon, Jul 23, 12 at 15:22
| Moving dirt is GROUND ENGAGEMENT and that is for GARDEN tractors not riding mowers. Loose materials is more tree bark and mulch than DIRT. IIRC that snow blade has trip springs so it will flip down if you try to overdo pushing snow. You can try to push dirt but I'm confident you'll hear your little JD scream when trying... pay attention and back off when it does or the great Green and Yellow god will smite you with a hefty repair bill. |
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