Grading Box Blade with Rippers or Tiller

[RBrown]

I spoke with my dealer yesterday about what else I can use in place of purchasing a tiller. I used my tiller money to get a bigger tractor and the dealer told me to consider a box blade with adjustable rippers. He said that this would do a good job of breaking up the ground and leveling off the garden. He said I can then use my walk behind tiller to till up the seed beds. Does this sound like a good compromise? A $300 box blade is easier to get by the wife than a $1,000 to $1,500 tiller.

 

[W5FL]

Certainly depends on the size of your garden.

A boxblade with scarfiers will do a fair job and is what I used when my first tiller was broke. I managed to get a couple of water lines dug up inadvertently, though. You will need to go over it many times in all directions and angles to get it ready for the hand tiller, but it will indeed work.

Actually my tiller was a very inexpensive one and only about 5 feet wide and was $1500. The boxblade was almost the same amount for a 76 inch Gannon with lever operated scarfiers. There are 8 scarfiers in 6 feet, so it works pretty well. I would always use it to break up the ground before tilling it anyway since it handles rocks better than the tiller.

Nothing beats a tiller for preparing a seedbed and if your garden is over 1/2 acre, I would consider it again. Since they get used only a couple of times a year, a rental place may fill this need for $50.00 to $100 a pop.

 

[EddieW]

I've been going to estate sales and auctions and watching the classified ads in the paper and have been able to pick up some good implements fairly cheap. Just a suggestion.

 

[jyoutz]

If you already have a walk behind tiller and can't spend much more money, then I would forget about a box blade and just buy a one-bottom moldboard plow. You can get a 14" model for about $250 new (check northern tools). I have a tiller and a plow and I always use the plow first before tilling to turn over the soil good and deep. I also like to do this in the fall to turn the old plants under. The plow before tilling is definately the way to go, because continual tilling without ripping deep will develop a hardpan in your soil just below tilling depth. I like to hang a few hundred pounds of weight on the front when plowing and it makes things work lots better.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

I use my one row cultivater. It works great in the spring after fall plowing. Then I till for seed bed. Northern tool or TSC has them for 125.$ or so.

 

[Opiekanopi]

I too prefer a moldboard plow. If money didn't matter, I'd have a plow, disk and a tiller. Tillers are nice but the prices are way up there. Once your plants are in you can't use it anyway. The thing is . . . I still want one

 

[Bird]

What do you mean, you can't use it anyway after the plants are in?/w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif Since I just have a 40" tiller and was using a 40" wide B7100, I planted my garden rows 5' apart and tilled regularly between the rows until I got the B2710 last year and like you said, quit using it after the plants were in. I moved the rows in to 4' apart and used a cultivator plow until the plants were too tall to straddle with the tractor.

Bird

 

[W5FL]

Bird, I almost bought one of those from Tractor Supply. Where did you get yours and are they about same price. I probably would have got one this year, but the dealer didn't know if they would kill grasshoppers, too. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

 

[Opiekanopi]

That might be a little wide for corn, but I have been researching the prices for new plows and disk harrows and together they cost almost as much as an inexpensive tiller. As far as the grasshoppers ... you can put it in road gear and fly through the garden at full speed and catch them in your teeth.

 

[Bird]

Wen, the cultivator I'm using is one I bought from Tractor Supply in 1995 (I think they still have the same ones, but I don't find it in my 1997 Catalog). It came with straight points and I didn't like them, so I went back and bought 6" field sweeps that bolted right on it place of the others. This thing has a "platform" on top that I suppose is for adding weight and I found it does much better when I put 110 pounds of weight on there.

Bird