ripping before Tilling

troweller · Apr 11, 2004

Is necessary to rip behind the tire tracks before tilling to achieve maximum depth?

PineRidge · Apr 11, 2004

Unless you have hard-pan or clay the tiller should be fine on its own. You could make the first pass a little shallower than the second.

jimg · Apr 12, 2004

I'm putting more area into garden this yr and the soil is pretty hard...and rocky. Im planning to rip prior to tilling.

Rimmer · Apr 12, 2004

I don't think it is necessary at all, your tiller should be able to handle the sod or whatever you have without any preparation work.

I did use the scarifiers on my box blade to rip up the sod on a couple of new garden plots this spring, but that was just to help the soil dry out a bit faster so that I could play with my new tiller!

SPIKER · Apr 12, 2004

I have been doing some tilling this past week and weekendanaged one row before the rain hit /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif I box bladed with full down scargfers in the garden for 2 reasons. one to rip out old vines and to break up the old hard wet ground some for drying. I also have been ripping virgine soil for the last couple days. to DRY and to pull out the longer vines and hard weed stalks. I don't have a routary YET if I did I would have run that first to help dry it out by getting the cover off. I DID scare up a nest or two of baby gardner snakes... hopefully I didn't crush too many if any of them... The buggs will get too far out of hand if I did!
also I took some creek bed photos and will try to post them tomarrow.

Mark M

jimg · Apr 13, 2004

Last night I borrowed a box blade and ran it thru most of the area (it got dark on me) Im planning to open. I pulled out quite a few rocks and there are still some more that need to be gotten out. I found that cross hatching the area did the most complete job. So, the pile I pulled out won't be cycling thru my tiller.

Rimmer · Apr 13, 2004

"...to pull out the longer vines and hard weed stalks..."

That's a good point, and one I had forgotten about. By running my BB over the ground with scarifiers down, the BB tilted as far forward as possible, and the blades just skimming over the ground, I was able to clear off most of the dry plant matter.

As far as the remaining grass and roots, it looks as if the tiller completely "vaporized" them! /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif