Help With Home Garden Tiller/Cultivator Comparison

Yes, I'm improving the soil. It didn't take much to do so and the parts that have been completed now retain the water longer, don't need to be watered as frequently, and provide a great foundation for the plants that are thriving in it.

I've gotten more radical in viewpoint. I like the sand. Good thing I'm not on some committee.

Not that I didn't get your amendment lecture, bfn.

They will both bounce you around in hard soil and their perdormances are less than reported. I have several tillers and I bought a small Mantis last year after seeking advice. Its good for tilling around plants to weed the garden, but you cant let em get away from you.

Wheels and a depth spike at the back is what makes em more stable.

Before all my tillers I used to get a guy to plow up my garden with a small tractor tiller. Then Id keep on top of the weeding with a scuffel hoe(Still the best and easiest tool for keeping plants weed free)

HERES a scuffel hoe. Its still the best damn weeding tool invented EVER


Amendong your sandy soil will help improve tilth and make it hold water and nutrients better. There are lots of gardens in sandy soils and watermelons grow best in sands. Raised beds are cute and are like big window boxes. They drain too quickly and re constantly in need of attention. Id go with the amended soil (mulches and ground laves are great), You will use em up yearly as they convert to soil and then are broken down into nutrients.

Do you have a caliche layer below your sand? Id break that up like the farmers in San Juaquin Valeey do,

Thanks Farmerman.

In the backyard, a large overgrown shrub that took up a large portion of space was removed and the soil just needs to be broken up, amendments added and tilled in. The shrub was removed because it was planted too close to and was starting to impact the cinder block wall between the neighbor's house and ours.

In the front and side yards, there is a layer of decomposed granite on top of either landscaping fabric or landscaping plastic. Underneath that is mostly sand. The plastic area doesn't allow water to soak in and the fabric area keeps rising to the surface as the decomposed granite gets washed away when it rains.

My plan is to remove portions of the plastic and fabric, build a terrace around the bottom slope of the front yard and level it out with amended soil for some flowering plants. Right now, when you water, it just runs down the sandy slope and onto the sidewalk before much of it soaks into the ground. We're losing a lot of the soil via erosion. Amendments will help more plants grow and hold the soil in place. Not much grows there other than junipers. I also want to build some borders around the existing flower beds next to the house and add some soil amendments.

The side yard (we're on a corner lot) is our hot zone and is covered with a 2 inch layer of gravel on top of plastic. Lots of sage, lavenders, Spanish broom, wild thyme and yucca grow there. There is a section that is nothing but gravel and I'd like to build a new bed there along the path to the water spigot. When BBB moved here, the whole property was covered with the black plastic and gravel. She had all the gravel removed in the front and backyards and left it on the side yard.

In the backyard, I've been refreshing the soil in the raised vegetable beds each year with composted leaf mulch and manure. What I'm thinking of doing is recycling some of the depleted soil from the vegetable beds and using it to amend the sandy soil areas next Fall when I refresh the vegetable beds with new mulch and manure. My theory is that recycling the soil in the raised beds should help tamp down the possibility of soil borne diseases when vegetables are planted in the same location year after year.

ahh - here you can rent the equipment for an afternoon, so the investment isn't that significant. too bad that option isn't available to you. it is a great way to test run tools/equipment.

You're mostly going to find that caliche on the higher levels of the plateau. The Middle Rio Grande Valley is mostly sand and gravel all the way to China. The early settlers used to dig a well about 4 or 5 feet deep and knock the bottom out of a barrel to use as their well casing. Until they dammed the river, they basically had a marshy aquafier right at the surface.

I do not know how the aquafier was affected by the "sewage systems" of the day.

aquifers were actually better served with outhouses tha with septic systems and distribution tiles. Modern sewage systems just recharge the aquifers without any real renovation

You're kidding (I hope).

No, you wouldn't do that, but it's not a pretty thought.

a home septage system just separates the big chunks from the liquids and (aqt best) aerates the liquid before its discharged into the tile field or seepage bed. Community septage systems are much better cause they treat the stuff to a much higher degree and usually discharge Nitrates at 10 ppm or lower into the drip, spray, or tile fields.

The problem with modern septage systems is that they chemically oxidize the crap and collect and concentrate nitrites and nitrates.