Tractor mounted tillers and gardens

[John *.?-!.* cub owner]

we are scaling back on our gardening now, but my wife and I have always put out a fairly large garden, and raised most of our vegetables for the year. when I got the Howard tiller for my cub it sure made the seed bed preparation a lot quicker and easier.

A few years ago I was needing some tines and called the Howard distributor for this part of the country, and he told me the L28 tiller used on the cubs was originally designed for the organic gardener or truck patch farmer. He went on to tell me the best way to use it was to plow the ground first, and then only till it 2" to at most 3" deep. I had been tilling 5 inches or so deep, which put quite a load on the cub, and decided to try his advice. Doing a little research I learned the reason for doing the preparation so shallow was to avoid killing the earthworms and destroying their tunnels, so i decided to also cultivate that way with my walking tillers. Since making those changes I have been having the best gardens I ever had, even with everyone else telling me how bad their gardens were due to the weather. Last year was the exception though, we had so much rain early in the season that much of the garden drowned.

[outdoors4evr]

Thanks for sharing this, I hadn't heard of this method. I normally till as deeply as possible (because of deep root weeds). Maybe I'll try this method this year.

[SONNY]

It's whatever works for you.--Here, it's deep and fast, so the roots can go down, and no it don't kill the worms OR toads!---gottum both because they love the loose dirt. thanks; sonny

[John *.?-!.* cub owner]

Here with a lot of clay the ground is hard, so you plow first then till shallow.