3 in 1 Soil Conditioner, Anyone use one?

[TDVT]

We're starting to get our gardening plans in place & going through a few different tiller threads, led me to Google spaders (which I had never heard of). Then going from there,further out into the net, I came across some folks moving from tillers/spaders to non-PTO soil prep & several mentioned a "3-in-1 Soil Conditioner". I had never heard of these either but found a few online as pictured below.

I guess the advantages of these are less maintenance than a powered implement, lower initial cost & from a gardening point of view it's supposed to maintain the organic layers that a tiller will disrupt (a big selling point of the spader).

Looks simple enough. Tine sweeps, a spike harrow & a mulching roller on a single frame.

Does anyone here have any experience, good or bad, with one of these?

 

[MMagis]

Without typing half a page, I'll just suggest to keep on looking. Most people use a tiller for a reason, they work. That thing will not work for a garden. They sort of work for food plots where large seeds will be planted, but even that they don't do as well as other equipment. They're geared mostly towards food plotters.
This line:
"maintain the organic layers that a tiller will disrupt"
is a lie.

 

[derifarm]

I've seen some veg farmers up here in New England using them. I think Unverferth makes one called a Perfecta harrow. They seem happy with them. The major disadvantage is they can't really do primary tillage. Once you have plowed field, it can work well. A spader on the other hand, can also do primary tillage, but will be slow as snot.

Imants makes a rotary spader which is great, but pricey.

Tillers definitely burn up your organic matter and can destroy soil structure. At the same time, they can do a good job preparing a seed bed.

 

[MMagis]

Tillers definitely burn up your organic matter and can destroy soil structure.

Explain that to me. If anything, they incorporate organic matter into the soil. Organic matter can't just disappear because a tiller went through. Any tillage destroys (disturbs) soil structure, that's what tillage is.

 

[RalphVa]

When I tore up my raised rows created by my Gravely rotary plow, I just used what's called a soil ripper from an old JD M. It's like just the cultivator tine part of the above picture. Below is a picture of mine. I just went across the garden plot in about 3 different directions and got the rows levelled out. Then I made new raised rows with the disc hillers shown below in place of the cultivator tines.

Haven't touched the rows since, as I do no till.

Ralph

 

[derifarm]

Explain that to me. If anything, they incorporate organic matter into the soil. Organic matter can't just disappear because a tiller went through. Any tillage destroys (disturbs) soil structure, that's what tillage is.

I was writing quickly and trying not to go off on a tangent and get off-topic. You're right, the tiller doesn't directly burn up the organic matter.

 

[TDVT]

The major disadvantage is they can't really do primary tillage. Once you have plowed field, it can work well.

I had assumed that these would be used for re-working an established bed, not tilling sod. But in my internet crash-course in plows, if you've got the HP, you can run a chisel plow (about 12+hp per shank) & do it up.

This is photo is from the John Deere site:

There were also spring tine harrow & roller attachments bolted on the back of some older ones I saw, creating basically the same configuration as the first pic I posted, only bigger.

As for disturbing or not disturbing layers, it seems you change out your sweeps depending on the "lift" that you want, from basic loosening to bring up lower layers to the top.

I think that the spaders are used alot in the Netherlands where the sub-soil is sand & they don't want to mix that in with their top soil. We can have some pretty lousy sub soil here in Vermont too, so I'm not sure why a less aggressive method of loosening but maintaining soil structure would be unreasonable?

But I've never used one either.

However, I know that at the end of the growing season our beds definitely have been stratified by worms & whatever micro-organisms are at work. Seems like a good thing to me.