Ground Engaging Equipment

My brother has a garden not quit that big. That's about 100' square. He has a rototiller for his tractor and uses it to cultivate his garden. He has a disk too, but doesn't use it since he got the tiller. One pass and you're done. So, if it's ease of use, it's a no brainer. Rototiller.

But, since you won't ever be planting the entire 1/4 acre in the same crop at the same time,(I think) I'd go with the disk attachment and a walk behind rototiller to prepare each individual bed for planting.

If there are deer around, you'll need a 10 foot high fence, too.

Thanks for the opinion lyn, good advice.

And yes, I have lots of deer every night. I also have a small arsenal and a freezer.

Yeah, well deer are classified as game animals and as such your are highly restricted as to when and how many you can kill. You MAY be able to get a nuisance permit to take more but I wouldn't count on it. Killing them out of season or over the number permitted can get you a hefty fine, confiscation of your weapon(s), vehicle and possibly jail time. Talk to your local extension agent and game warden to see what your options are. Usually, tall electric fences with a hefty jolt that lean outward are required. Don't know where you are in FLA but you may have trouble with feral hogs which are even more destructive and difficult to deal with. Better plan to invest in substantial fences. For 1/4 acre plot a tractor and implements is a little overkill. You will probably do better finding one of the older TroyBilt Horse size rototillers. For food plots, once you get the soil in good condition you shouldn't have to do that much soil prep. Even many commercial farm operations have gone to no-till. You'll probably want to get a mechanized seeder and a fertilizer applicator unless you are going totally organic. Also look at irrigation requirements and available water sources.

Have never used a tractor rototiller. But I do imagine depending on the type there would be a reduction in pulling speed compared to a disc. So the time it takes, maybe some what of a bust. Since 1/4 acre should not take long for one pass with a disc.

Do know mechanical up keep cost will be more. Much more if you do not have the skills to do the work and have to take it to a dealer to get repaired. Disc are pretty simple devices. As a young man on the family farm learn to hate big rocks.

Yes, the rototiller would have to be pulled much slower. Although I estimate a 10 pass ground prep initially with the disc, once initially prepped, it will go much faster (2-3 passes) on subsequent drags.

And yes, the maintenance issue is a big factor in my decision. I'm pretty handy mechanically and would maintain/repair either myself, but I see very little to go wrong with a disc.

All good points.

I am leaning toward the disc harrow. You are completely right about the rows. A tiller would not leave any.

Depending on how strong your tractor is, you can pile up some concrete blocks on that harrow and make pretty quick work of cutting up that dirt.

The harrows I am looking at are upwards of 600 lbs. My tire track is almost 7 feet wide so I need a minimum 6-1/2 feet harrow.

The tractor is a John Deere with rear aftermarket turf tires. They are 20" wide x 4 feet tall.

A neighbor once had a delivery of gravel arrive at his house and the guy got the rig stuck. The rig was a F-250 pulling a 16' x 6' box trailer with 4' sides completely full of gravel. Both were bottomed out to the frames (could not unhitch). I couldn't get to the front or back so I hitched up to the trailer hitch with a piece of chain. I pulled both sideways until they were T-boned and got them out. Pulling is not a problem.

I think you'll be okay. I wish I had that tractor. Can't complain though. I've got a neighbor that just bought a new John Deere.....................I just need to give him some time to knock the "new" off of it, and I'll probably be able to borrow it.

Wow! That much tractor for a quarter acre... I use a Massey 35 on a quarter SECTION (160 acres!).. Get a Troy Built walk-behind rototiller.. It leaves a beautiful smooth surface behind... So nice a surface, you need to walk off to the side while operating it...

I too would recommend sustainable, no-till methods. If for no other reason, your tractor will compact the soil pretty badly on a quarter acre. We use no-till a lot here in western PA for smaller plots, particularly truck crops, and it generally pays for itself pretty quickly.

I would opt for the rototiller, as I have had several and they worked far better than any type of harrow; disc, spike, or spring-tooth. If you buy a rototiller, either get a Deere or a Howard (Howard actually provided the design for the Deere and may build it), they are built to last and are easy to maintain. Land Pride also makes one on which the rotor operates in the reverse of the other two. I have used one but I didn't like it particularly. The forward rotating models can have a tendency to push the tractor ahead if they are cutting heavy sod or compacted soil, but that rotation is an advantage if you have vegetation on the surface as the undisturbed soil surface acts as resistance to permit the tines to chop the vegetation up rather than just mixing it in, as the reverse operation does.

I recently had the great misfortune to have to rent a Kubota tractor and rototiller. The lousy tines are mounted in such a way that there is no projection on the shaft against which they can rest to resist the forces of tilling, they rely on the mounting bolts only and, if you hit a rock, the tine breaks at one of the bolt holes and then has to be replaced - they are expensive. The other designs have a block that supports the tine against such forces, resulting in virtually no breakage.

If you decide to look into a walk-behind rototiller, I would recommend a BCS. They are made in Italy and are all-gear drive, 3 speeds forward and 2 reverse. There are several implements that are interchangeable with the rototiller, which mounts using two bolts and a meshing coupling on the drive shaft. I happen to own a medium-size one and I wouldn't trade it for anything, it is a brute and virtually impossible to stall. I have used it to reclaim old gravel driveways into planting beds and it literally eats that stuff without taking off with you holding on for dear life. They aren't cheap, but you will never wear one out. I have had to replace the tines one time but I have had it for 15 years and have done a lot of tilling with it. I also have a brush mower and a chipper/shredder for it and they work equally as well as the tiller. I wouldn't think twice about maintaining a 1/4-acre garden with it.

I found the disc way was slow and easy, but lost a lot of time. The extra fuel costs (because of the running time) eventually outweigh the purchase savings. Discs also really need a much larger area to turn and get results. (IMO) The rotavator is quick, and can give immaculate (seed bed) results, and is very convenient for small areas.

A set of discs can be picked up for little money, a good rotavator is more popular, for good reason. Your choice. (personally I would go for a good condition s/hand rotavator.)

You may like to consider having a contractor "break the ground" the first time.
Any additional expense would be well justified by not breaking your machine! (For a clear conscience naturally advise him of any known rocks or likely difficult places!)

jt.

It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation which give happiness.

If you have red clay like I do, getting the ground ready is going to s*ck, no matter how you do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzXmLV9QJZg

Hire a neighbor. Doesn't seem to be cost effective to buy capital equipment for a piddly little 1/4 acre. You'll need to concentrate your energies on protecting your crops from wild hogs, deer, and armadillos.

After reading others answers, it's obvious you chose the wrong people to give you advice on agricultural subjects. Having farmed for 71 years and having studied soils during that time I know that very few farmers in business today use rototillers for their crops. A rototiller breaks down soil structure worse than any other implement. It takes a lot of years to rebuild it. Many people do not realize that roots need air every bit as much as they need water. A good soil needs tilth, structure to supply it. Rototilling also increases the formation of hardpan as does a large tractor with small tires. Many people do not realize that the large John Deere and Caterpillar tractors leave less compaction than a child would do because they put a lot of tire or track between their weight and the soil. Of course you couldn't turn one around on a quarter of an acre. Listen to the advice on no till if it is practical. Remember that no till depends on proper weed control. If you are unable to get the training and license to handle the chemicals you will be dependent on home supply stores and their costs.(or a lot of back breaking labor. Do you have a moldboard plow or are you thinking of just the disc? It's been a lot of years ago, and I'd never want to do it again, but it is possible to do a quarter of an acre without a tractor, many wives did it every year.

I take personal exception to your comment that he chose the wrong people to ask. I grew up on a 400 acre working farm in southeast Alabama. Not in the commercial class corn and wheat farms of the mid west but I know what is involved in farming. That's why I went into engineering. Quite a few of the commentators on this site also come from a rural farming background. This guy was basically asking about sustainment/small scale truck farming, not large scale commercial wholesale cash crop farming. In FLA, he is probably dealing with very sandy soil - not much clay or organic matter - so soil compaction is not such a big concern. He said he is in a rural area so deer, feral hogs, coyotes, armadillos and various and sundry raiding varmints are going to be a major concern/headache. As such, he is going to need some serious electric and woven wire fences or plan to spend a lot of his nights sitting in his patch with a gun and night-vision scope. As many have said, you don't need the aggravation of a tractor and implements to tend a 1/4 acre plot. A self-powered rotor tiller is a much better solution. Dealing with a bottom/turning plow, a disc harrow, and a cultivator hooked to a tractor in a fenced 1/4 acre plot is more trouble than it is worth. Hooking up and unhooking by yourself will result in a great cussing session (at least it does for me). I tend to leave my bush hog/rotary mower hooked up all the time. Since he is doing this for food he will need some type of irrigation. That won't work well with a tractor and implements setup. A rear tine self-powered rotor tiller will allow him to work around an irrigation setup.

I don't have a moldboard, just thinking about the disc.

There are lots of farms around me that give away all the manure you want free. Also, I can have chipped laps/limbs delivered free here. The power company subcontractors regularly clear tree growth back from power lines due to our hurricanes, and they look for locals with acreage to dump.

I have more land than 1/4 acre, that would be the food plod. My "yard" is 3-1/2 acres with the balance in woods and two ponds.

My tractor has aftermarket turf tires and does not pressure the land much. I don't have the time to commit for doing it all by hand. When I was young, we would work manure from our pasture into the soil for the garden. We would till at the start of every year. Our garden did great.

While I am not adverse to fertilizer or Seven dust, I am not keen on weed control chemicals.

I think you'll be fine with the disc.

If you're anywhere near Valdosta Ga, these guys are good. I've got one right up the street from me.

If you can find a way to get the initial groundbreaking done, you might be able to get off real cheap. Check this out. Good prices on harrows too.

I'm an ole Okie,and have several large gardens in the past and when in need of different equipment I found welcome arms in the USDA ag. Dept. that had different Items to loan..Just an idea...

That's a good one if he can do it, considering he'll only be using either one for a few hours, a couple of times a year.

Put away your tractor...

Surely there are plenty of landless peasants in this post economic apocalypse that is the USA.

They'd be grateful for a chance to till your fields with their bare hands just for a chance of finding a morsel to eat in the dirt.

If you are growing potatoes, don't buy either a tiller or harrow.

I have had great success growing potatoes in the south with no tilling or digging. All you have to do is pile leaves on the ground about a foot deep and then water them to help them settle. When you are ready to plant, cut your seed potatoes up with one eye on each peice. Rake back the leaves and put the peices on top of the ground, then cover with the leaves again. Water to settle the pile again. The potato plants will grow up through the leaves. The roots will mostly spread across the top of the ground and feed off the composting leaves, which Darwin called 'leaf mold'. The potatoes form on the roots as usual, but don't require any digging to harvest. You can even carefully rake the leaves back and harvest without disturbing the plants, letting them put on more new potatoes.

For other crops, you are on your own.

I also read somewhere that good farmers don't grow crops, they grow good soil.

I'm going to give that a try. Thanks.

Back in the '80s' I read a book by Charles Darwin on leaf mold. It was in my university library (I was shocked). Anyway, decaying organic mater in your soil is the food that plants thrive on. You will be hard pressed to add too much organic matter to your soil. You will want to mix it into the soil for best results.

Earthworms are nature's rototiller. As they burrow through the soil, they loosen packed soil, leave holes that let in air, and while consuming soil and organic matter they leave castings that are some of the richest natural fertilizer you can get. They will find your amended soil and do their thing. Using mechanical tilling methods will kill off some of your earthworm population. I always was impatient, and didn't want to wait for 'wild' worms to find their way into my garden and multiply, so I went to the local bait shop and bought some 'seed' worms to give the population a jump start. Anyway, they work for free all year round.

I suggest that you consider planting clover. Clover makes really lovely flowers, and once established, it will re-seed itself. One of the great things about clover is it's ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen in a form that is readily available to plants. Actually the clover plant doesn't do much of the work here, there is a bacteria that lives in the roots of the clover plant. Nodules form in the roots where the bacteria colonies grow and the nitrogen is concentrated there. The clover dies every year, leaving the nitrogen in the soil, for other plants to use. The bacteria you want is naturally occuring in the soil, but, if you want to give it a jump start, you can buy nitrogen fixing bacteria in powder form at your local feed store. The clover seed will be cheapest there as well. Buy them together, follow the instructions, and plant. As I remember it, you dampened the seeds, added the bacteria powder, mixed, and planted.

I would suggest that you consider planting sugar cane as a natural fence. Planted really close together, it would be an impenetrable wall. To be effective, it would have to be several feet wide. I'm thinking of the cane patches that we used to get our fishing cane poles from, nothing could get through there. I haven't tried it, myself, as a garden fence, yet.

If you are planning to plant tomatoes or bell peppers, you will want to use super phosphate fertilizer. If you spread phosphate fertilizer out in the soil, it is quickly bound up in a form that plants can't absorb. Broadcasting phosphate fertilizer is mostly a waste of money. Instead of broadcasting it, dig your hole for the seedling plant a few inches deeper than normal. Drop about a quarter cup of superphosphate fertilizer in the hole and cover it with about an inch of soil. Then plant the seedling as normal. Tomato seedlings will develop roots along any portion of the stem that is underground, so plant them deep, up to the bottom of the leaf branches. You can also disolve a little superphosphate in the water you use while planting the seedling. The phosphate helps stimulate root growth. Anyway, back to our clump of superphosphate at the bottom of the hole. The fertilizer on the outside of the clump gets bound up in an unusable form, but the middle is still 'good to go'. The growing plant will push some roots into the clump and draw all the phosphate it needs and wants.

Your local agricultural extension service can be a great help to you with information and services. Even though you are only planting a quarter acre, you are still a farmer, and we are already paying for them to help farmers.

Sorry to get off on a soapbox, I guess the spring planting fever has me itching to go. Good luck.

I'm not the OP, but thanks for the info. I have a much smaller garden. All fall leaves go into composting piles, and the neighbors have mounds of old composted horse poop mixed with wood shavings....................all great stuff. I also pick up a few dozen night crawlers and turn them loose in the garden in the beginning of the season.

Spring is almost here!!!!!!

If you really want a lazy way of turning the soil, tack or buy a few pigs.

They will make the soil ready to use in short time, and then eat or sell them.

jt

If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light,
and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?

My son has 4 acres of land in South Mississippi. He has in the oast planted crops for his own consumption. It is time consuming hard work, expensive and yield is low. Now he has gotten into hydroponics which grows crops without soil; just water and fish. It is a fraction of the cost of soil growing. Benefits are: organic, no fertilizers or insectides, growth is rapid and year round yield. Not to discourage you from conventional farming, but this is the wave of the future. It is spreading rapidly across the country. I would certainly consider it's possibilities before dirt farming.

I have a small deer fenced garden with cinder block raised beds. The cinder blocks will never have to be replaced in your lifetime. A lot of people prefer raised gardens as they get older, like me. No rototilling needed. You can even put tunnel hoop greenhouses over them or just plastic or newspapers to keep weeds out until ready to plant. This method has a lot of fans. Actually I prefer planting semi-dwarf fruit trees just tall enough to discourage the deer. I put a small circle of wire around them, with tall metal stakes, the first couple of years. Seems like a lot less work to me. Just mainly pruning, fertilizing, and spraying.