A plow cuts a small strip of ground & flips it over. That neatly buries anything growing on top to kill it. It's not designed or intended to mix up dirt. A tiller or disk harrow is however intended to mix up dirt. A harrow especially after a field has been plowed to mix up the dirt that the plow has loosened up.
A disk harrow can till ground a lot faster than a rototiller, but depending on how packed the ground & how much vegetation will require multiple passes, negating the speed advantage. To work properly a disk harrow needs to be pulled at a reasonably fast speed so the pans can reasonably fling dirt around. A harrow will bounce over roots & stumps better than a tiller. I looked at both & went with a tiller, no need to get up to speed for proper tilling & the tiller is a lot more maneuverable than the disk, especially for the wife's garden.
I don't remember how wide my King Kutter tiller is, but it's enough to clear the 60" track on my
L3200 (probably 62" or 66"). I "plowed" my front pasture with a subsoiler before hitting it with the rototiller. My 32hp
L3200 HST couldn't go fast at all, but did a good job. The HST was really nice as I could just keep pushing on the go pedal until the RPMs started to drop then ease off a hair. Kept the engine pushed to the max most of the time, despite varying dirt conditions. Might have been a fair bit harder with a gear machine, especially if you are short on HP.
A reverse rotation tiller will do a better job burying plant material & leave a slightly smoother finish. However a forward rotating (with the tires) tiller will jump over rocks & roots a fair bit better than a reverse rotation one. For some reason reverse rotation seems to be slightly more expensive.
Stalling the machine via the PTO shaft isn't great, but isn't the end of the world, depending on how it happens. If you are just pushing it a little to hard & end up stalling, you are unlikely to hurt anything & there is little reason to adjust your clutch. Your drive train should be built to take all the torque your engine can put out. You just need to manage how hard you are pushing your tractor a bit better. The clutch (or sheer pin) is there to prevent sudden massive spikes such as the entire power train going from 540rpm (2000r+ usually at the engine) to dead stop in an eighth of a second when a rock jams the tiller or what not. The instantaneous torque when something jams & all the rotating mass of your engine & drive train comes to a screeching (maybe literally) halt is a LOT more than it's designed for.
