Any Experience with Mini Tillers?

OkieNCognito · Mar 4, 2004

I'm considering purchasing a mini tiller - one of the little 20 lb jobs, for use in my flower beds around the house. The soil is black gumbo and I've got to get some compost incorporated for better drainage before everything drowns, but I'm concerned that the mini tillers will be too light to be effective.

For some reason I have this mental picture of the thing just bouncing me all around while barely scratching the surface. Has anyone had any experience with these? Can they really dig down 10"?

fishman · Mar 4, 2004

I have an older Craftsman that does o.k. in broken soil. It wouldn't be very effective at all in packed soil. It would never dig to 10" deep in my opinion.

To be fair, it probably isn't nearly the tiller of the Mantis or the Honda, but I wouldn't know for sure.

I do like mine a lot, but I wouldn't put it's ground breaking capacity at anything approaching even a traditional 3 hp front tine tiller, which sadly, don't seem to be manufactured any more in an inexpensive brand. Gotta buy a 6 hp beast. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Will_C · Mar 4, 2004

I have had a Mantis for several years now. I don't do large gardening, but I am happy with the unit. I have used it to prepare perennial beds, and it does hop up and down, I can eventually bury it in the ground and till all it can. It is just ine for what I use it for. I think it would do fine cultivating narrow rows in a vegetable garden with soil that has already been broken up.
Will

professor · Mar 4, 2004

I have owned both the Troybilt mini tiller and the Mantis. The Mantis tiller readily out performs the Troybilt. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Alan L. · Mar 4, 2004

My wife has the little 1.5 HP Honda tiller I got for about $300 at Home Depot or Lowes. It is a 4-stroke and works great, although a little slow for a large garden.

chrisjbell · Mar 5, 2004

I've got one of those deals where you have a power head that can accept attachments - line trimmer, edger, hedge trimmer, pruning saw, and tiller. It is a little thing, but does a decent job for light tilling, meaning that it only digs to about maybe 8 inches and takes a fair amount of time to do so. It works well for weeding type chores (between rows) but isn't really suitable for preparing larger beds. Works fine for something small (say, 10x10?) though...

RalphVa · Mar 5, 2004

I've a Ryobi. It's a 4 cylinder head with removable attachments. The tiller works great on already tilled soil but isn't good for new soil. It will NOT go down 10". You need to either get out your digging fork or rent a big tiller to get this deep or get yourself a Gravely with a rotary plow. It'll even dig post holes.

Ralph

skent · Mar 5, 2004

I have had a Mantus for 12 years (or more). Seems like everyone that borrows it ends up buying one of their own. I only use it for cultivating small areas (Troybilt horse for heavy work). Amazing little device. Tines look as good as the day I bought it. Five years ago, a cousin borrowed it and ran it (for 20 minutes or so) with unmixed gas in it. When he returned it, I noticed the gas was unmixed, drained what was left and filled with new gas/oil mix. Started right up and is still going strong. I think it's engine is made by Echo.

EastTexFrank · Mar 5, 2004

I've had a Mantis for 10 years or so and you're right, it is an Echo engine. It's a great little machine for what it is. You're not going to till up a large garden with it but I use occasionally between the rows of my large vegetable garden and on my wife's raised beds at the start of every year to till in the composted manure and get them ready for planting. I also used it in black gumbo when we lived in Dallas and that is a lot harder work. It will do it given time but it will bounce and pull you around a lot until it gets the crust broken up. As for digging down 10", I suppose it could but it would take a lot of pulling to clear the soil out of the bottom of the hole. It'll do 6" without much trouble and a little bit of working might get you down to 8". All in all, it's a good little machine.

DannyD · Mar 21, 2004

We have a little Ryobi that just beats the heck out of our clay dirt and makes dust of it. I love that little thing for starting to ditch something (at least till I get the middle buster for my tractor). It does a great job even though it does hop, once you get it digging (not hard to do) it just digs and digs. If you take out what you have dug, and then dig more, you can get to what you want. I have had mine buried in what it was working on.....kept going.