Last year was my first garden. I prepared it, but was not able to plant it because I had to move. It was 30 x 80 and was of course red Caroline clay and hard as stone. I used a rented tiller until a neighbor loaned me him. I tilled that plot 6 times before I was satisfied. Lots of rocks both large and small that had to be removed. I burned off the grass and weeds and had at it. I don't think that you can till "Too Much". Especially if you are adding to the soil. Yes, for my 2 cents W I would till it every year. Both before you plant and also after the season is finished

This is my 1st year with a real garden and I tilled in compost before planting. I tilled and tilled because I needed to make sure the compost with well mixed with the clay. It's all good now.

After the season is over, I plan on adding another couple of yards od compost, then tilling it in. After that, a layer of mulch will go on top, most likely straw, for winter. The early next spring, I'll be tilling whatever I used for mulch into the soil a few weeks before planting. Also, I'll probably till just before planting because lose dirt holds water and air (Oxygen) better and makes it easier for plant roots to grow.

Ok, I plan on using grass clipping to help prevent weeds, what if I put my fall leaves in there and then till it reall well? Good idea or bad? I did add some manure on the till job before I planted. What else is good organic material you add to your garden?

Some tilling is very good. But I believe that too much tilling is not so. In the case of crabjoe where you want to mix in an amendment, more tilling will be necessary of course. But too much tilling with no amendments plus rain and/or watering, can harm a lot the structure of a soil, especially clay.
Just my opinion.
Carol

I may have to do the occasional forking but no more tilling...my beds are so light and airy that if I leaned my weight on them I would sink at least 2 inches.....I have put a lot of work into them and don't expect to ever till again...

What else is good organic material you add to your garden?

Compost! ;) Check out the Soil & Compost Forum here for lots of suggestions such as shredded leaves, cardboard, shredded newspaper, straw, grass clippings (no herbicides), hay, etc.

As to tilling, it all depends on how you want to build your garden. Lasagna gardens and sheet compost gardens don't require any tilling after a year or so. Soil beds may need annual tilling if you are adding lots of new amendments regularly or if using a fall cover crop.

I till annually because I always plant a fall cover crop of buckwheat and vetch and then plow it in in the spring. OR if you add multiple layers of different mulches in the fall (called sheet composting) you'll find within a couple of years that you can plant directly without tilling.

Sheet Composting Gardens

Lasagna Gardening

ruthie, would you pass your secret on to us? how have achieved such airy soil? I'm soon starting some "lasagna" raised beds to try the lasagna thing, but I should add some more, so perhaps I could use your method in them?

I'm so fortunate to have a beautiful loamy soil, no rocks. (don't hate me:) The area in which I live is known for the rich farmland. If only the farmers could continue to make a profit without selling out to developers...another story I won't get into now.

Like Ruthie, I tilled early on but no more. I did lasagna beds 7 yrs ago...while cooking up some compost in the meantime. My beds (built over an old septic field) are very light and fluffy but I do 'fork em' in the spring. I have more worms than you could ever imagine. My garden gets lots of leaves in the fall...or anytime I can get my hands on them. Also, straw and grass clippings.

Mother Earth News just did an article on the benefits of no till. My neighbor...who tills every spring borrowed it for that article.

Carol I have decent enough soil here on the property...rich and black, but of course lacking and not nearly enough of it.....I live in the Tx hill country but am fortunate to be in an area where I actually do have dirt as opposed to the rock that most people have...I am in a little valley ..but with all that in mind...I have added to that top soil....tons of leaf mulch raked from under our trees...It's thick and natural...never been anything here except a few horses way back when...to that I had brought in 12 yards of sandy loam and I have a double barreled composter that goes 24/7...I am not above stopping on the side of the road to pick up anything that I think will enrich my soil or compost...Nothing in the way of greens or good stuff like egg shells or peelings etc ever goes any where except to the composter...My husband mows the yard so in a pattern so that at the end he has some piles of grass for me to use....I just keep working on it all the time....I started out by just using the native soil here and all the left over sand from the building of our house...I made raised beds with that and made compost in the aisles between the rows...always working on my soil...but it has never been walked on and I try not to even put my weight in any of the beds...

Ruthie, you must have a beautiful garden then. I'm clipping your post to have your formula by hand. Thank you!

tropheus, what Ruthie says is a valuable response to your question. Keep us posted on how it goes with the garden!

We have raised beds and till them every year with a mini tiller. Each year in the spring before planting we add a couple of inches of compost, spread fertlizer on top, and till it in. In the fall it is till in all the stems and other garden debris.

I agree that once the beds are established maintaining it is not such a chore and tilling is mostly to mix up the soil with the new compost.

If you're going to get a tiller, may I recommend an electric. I first had a gas tiller; died after just a couple years. Not sure why. Switched to an electric, and it's so much better. No smoke. Much less vibration. Far more powerful -- acts like it's trying to dig to China. No need to hurt your arm trying to start it. No need to keep gas and oil right. Better for the environment. The only downside is the cord, but it's no worse than vaccuuming.

Karen,

"Far more powerful..."

Electric tillers have some advantages, but power isn't one of them. A gas powered tiller typically has about a 5hp engine, while an electric tiller is closer to 1hp. A 5hp electric motor would be a big, heavy, unwieldy thing.

MM

Karenrei, I'm curious as to what make of tiller you are using. How long have you been using it?

Tropheus, I {{gwi:73008}} and in the winter, I turn under {{gwi:73009}}, along with horse manure, a fall crop of greens that I have grown and mown, {{gwi:56496}} let that set awhile then {{gwi:73010}} to rest until spring planting time. Despite all the dire warnings, I have no hard pan, messed up soil structure or lack of a thriving, healthy population of worms. I have found that the need to do any kind of cultivation or tilling is reduced as time goes by and the garden is improved, plants are healthier and weeds are less and less.

This has improved my garden soil vastly and leads to gardens like {{gwi:49376}}.

I string soak hoses after the plants are big enough, set my tomato cages and mulch heavily with shredded oak leaves.
That works for me, and has over the years.
Bill P.

depending on the condition of your soil & what it lacks according to a soil analysis, you may need to till at first then as we do just put down organic fert/compost & fork into top 2-3 in just to cover it & NOT disturb the soil structure or the worms etc. Depth of soil is important if you have hard-pan a few inches down you may need to pulverize that if possible. Good Luck.

Electric tillers have some advantages, but power isn't one of them.

What is your experience with both gas and electric tillers? Because I've used both in the same year, this year, and the electric was far more powerful. Sorry, I don't recall the brand or the stats of the current electric; it was at least a 12A/120V, may have been more. Got it at Menards -- it was their only electric model -- Remington, perhaps? Not sure. Our old gas tiller was a "Ryobi" (2-cycle? Burned a gas-oil mixture). The two are comparable in scale -- electric is probably a tad bit lighter, perhaps a tad bit larger, same tilling area for both. The gas tiller would "turn over" the top layer of soil. The electric outright digs, even through established grass roots. Goes down an inch or two per second, so you really have to keep moving ;)

From a more basic standpoint, mass per mass, electric engines tend to perform better than gasoline engines. Gasoline engines perform better the faster they turn the crankshaft -- they like high RPM. For electrics, the maximum torque is at speed zero, which is exactly what you want in a tiller.

I'm just talking from personal experience here. Our electric could probably till through a previously tilled plot in half the time of our gasoline, and a quarter of the time for a grassy plot. My biggest problem with it is that it has so much power that it tends to "burrow" ;)

Then factor in the other things. Better for the environment**, much cheaper to operate***, no fumes, less vibration, no straining to start it, virtually no maintenence, and so on, all for the one downside of it having a cord (like a vaccuum cleaner). There's no way I'd go back to a gas tiller.

** -- Gasoline engines are usually 20-35% efficiency. Tillers would probably be on the lower end of that range, while cars are on the higher end. Electric engines are usually ~80-90% efficient. Now, your power comes from a power plant, but that power plant is getting 40-50% efficiency, plus it has much tigher pollution controls than a tiller. Furthermore, power plants in the US almost never burn oil, which is a resource that we're rapidly depleting.

*** -- Just like electric cars tend to be much cheaper to operate than gasoline cars. Not only is less energy wasted due to power plant efficiency, but since power plants are "centralized" and burn fuels that are cheaper than gasoline, the energy you get from them is that much cheaper.

I love my little Mantis tiller. If I planted an acre, I might want a tractor, but with small home garden I find the little tiller to be great. I can pick it up and carry it. When something gets in the tines (like roots) I can quickly take them off and clean them. I never plant my garden all at one time, so I just till as needed. It gets much deeper than our old, big tiller did.

Karen,

Although I agree in with the general concept of your reasoning for an electric triller, I don't feel your performance with an electric tiller is what most people experiance.

Yes, electric motors are toque motors, but in general, a gas gardening tool will out perform the electric. They usually build electric models for light duty work.

Look at chainsaws... I've got a small gas chainsaw and my neighbor as an electric. No comparison, my chainsaw will run circles around his. Same goes for the edger. If my gas edger was a professional, his electric model is a student in their 1st week of learning.

As for your experiance with the Ryobi tiller, maybe it was the model (bad design, could be type of tine), or you had a bad tiller. I can tell you that my Troybilt Tiller (CRT, rear tine) kicks butt!

BTW, I surely can't imagine someone building an electric tiller like my Troybilt. Althought it's one of their smaller rear tine models (Super Bronco), it's hugh compared to a Mantis tiller or the likes.

In conclusion, there are different types for different people. Me personally, I can't imagine an electic tiller doing the job of a gas tiller. I also don't see how using anything electric is more "enviormentally" friendly. Who cares is the electric engine is 80-90% efficent, when the power plant is only 40-50% efficent. You're talking 80-90% of 40-50%. Plus are you accounting for the power lost in transmission? How about emissions from a coal fired power plant? Now if you're talking power from a nuclear plant, it's a whole new ball game, but to many people are scared of those. If you get power from Hydro, it's clean, but the damage they do to the habitat is another story. Everything seems to have pluses and minuses.

>>>>I can't imagine an electic tiller doing the job of a gas tiller.

I feel the same way.

Ryobi 2 stroke mini tillers are pretty weak 1 horsepower is possible at high RPM but they have low torque. It is no more than a weed wacker engine stuck onto a tiller. An engine suited to trimming crabgrass and dandelions not digging in the dirt. So if that is the benchmark used for comparing to electric tillers then all bets are off.

There are other 2 stroke tillers that use the 49cc Tecumseh TC300 engine, that make 2 horsepower and are designed for the application. My Troy-bilt has it but that model is no longer for sale. Husqvarna offers one. I have yet to see a 2 HP electric motor tiller, if there were such a thing it would draw a 20 amperes of current. I am sure I would not want an electric powered tiller with sharp tines while dragging 100 foot extension cord in the dirt carrying 20 amps of current, but that is your call. I can say I have cut the extension cord more than once on electric hedgeclippers that only draw a few amps.

Ryboi engines are not good starting engines either, I will grant you that -- I had a Ryobi 725R string trimmer the thing was a piece of junk. It could be had with the tiller attachment by the way. Personally I would not buy another piece of Ryobi outdoor power equipment ever again, I replaced it with an Echo model 210 trimmer.

As for the environmental angle, that is probably more used as a selling point than a true benefit. For the number of hours in a year you use a tiller, as a tool owner I value reliability and power and convenience to myself, over an intangible to somebody else.

As for electric motors having stronger torque, well it all depends, because a gas engine tiller has a centrifugal clutch. The TC300 engine has strong low end torque, it is used in ice augers used by ice fishermen, tillers, and to power motorized bicycles.

I am not completely against electric equipment, I have a Remington electric chainsaw for light duty pruning work and I drag around a 1100 watt Yamaha generator to power it.

You personal experience may have been that the electric tiller was more powerful than the gas, but that would be the exception to the rule. In addition, an electric engine is not necessarily more environmentally friendly than gas. Here in IL 98% of our electricity comes from coal and nuclear power plants, arguably the two most environmentally damaging forms of electricity generation.

As to the original post, I will hand till organic material into my raised beds every spring (and fall if I have compost ready), but I would never use a power rototiller. I rototilled my grandparents' garden this spring, and the vibration and compaction beneath the blades was appalling. That being said, it was a necessary evil in their garden because of how much clay is in their soil. They never could have planted otherwise.

Notice how the people who've used electric tillers are weighing in in favor of them, while those who haven't are weighing against them. Just an observation. :)

[quote]>>>>I can't imagine an electic tiller doing the job of a gas tiller.

I feel the same way. [/quote]

What you can imagine doesn't affect the reality of the situation. If any of you are in Iowa, I invite you to try it out for yourselves. :)

[quote]I also don't see how using anything electric is more "enviormentally" friendly. Who cares is the electric engine is 80-90% efficent, when the power plant is only 40-50% efficent. You're talking 80-90% of 40-50%. Plus are you accounting for the power lost in transmission? How about emissions from a coal fired power plant? Now if you're talking power from a nuclear plant, it's a whole new ball game, but to many people are scared of those. If you get power from Hydro, it's clean, but the damage they do to the habitat is another story. Everything seems to have pluses and minuses.

...

Here in IL 98% of our electricity comes from coal and nuclear power plants, arguably the two most environmentally damaging forms of electricity generation. [/quote]

You're both missing the point. Gasoline engines are 20-35% efficient, and smaller engines are on the lower end of that scale. Let's be generous and say 25%. Let's go on the lower end of both the electric and power plant generation -- 80% of 40%. So, we're favoring gasoline engines in every issue here. Let's throw in a 10% transmission loss (7.2% is average in the US, and 5% is more appropriate for most cities). 0.8 * 0.4 * 0.9 = 29%. Even if we weigh *everything* against the electric, it still comes out more efficient.

Oh, but it gets worse. Small gasoline engines have almost no pollution controls. Even car pollution controls pale in comparison to power plant pollution controls. Even plants burning coal -- the dirtiest power plant energy source -- have their exhaust go through a scrubber** that cleans it up more than a car's exhaust system. It's an issue of scale; the sort of pollution controls that go on power plants would be unaffordable to put on every last gasoline engine out there. Of course, even wind and solar power can often run an electric motor for cheaper than a gasoline motor can be run.

There's a reason why groups like the Sierra Club support electric cars...

** Coal plant scrubbers include wet scrubbers, spray dryer scrubbers, and dry injection scrubbers that involve fabric filters, injection liquified or non-liquified adsorbants (sodium or calcium-based), and/or electrostatic precipitation. Most cars have little more than a catalytic converter to minimize fuel unburned by the inefficient ICE combustion process. Because of how dirty coal is and how much of our power infrastructure it makes up, levels of SO2 and particulates are higher with EVs; however, CO and HCs are nearly eliminated, NOx is notably decreased, and CO2 decreases by 10-20%.

However, this is a comparison on *cars*, which have far superior pollution controls than small ICEs like lawnmowers and tillers. Small engines just pour out the pollutants like there's no tomorrow. There's really no comparison.

Oh, and I didn't even factor in the fact that gasoline engines only reach their maximum efficiency at high RPM/low torque situations, while on a tiller, the time you need the power most is low RPM/high torque.

See now I have to jump on this band wagon.....I am not the most intelligent person in the world but I would rather breath the pollutants coming out of my Mantis tiller than I would breath the pollutants coming out of the TVA power plant right down the road from me. Now granted the steam and smoke is alot cleaner than it was before the scrubbers but is still mighty yellow coming out of there. Now if the water scrubs this SO3 and it liquifies what happens to it then?? No matter how you slice it, it is still there.
I personally have had experience with lots of electric tools and have found them to be lacking in the torque deptartment. That being said I do think that in the last few years there have been great advances in the electric device area that they may have a great product. I still am up in the air on which is better. The only real way to figure that out would be to calculate the required wattage it takes to run the tiller for a length of time and calculate line loss from the power plant through the lines and transmission loss from the sub stations and so on and so forth then figure out how much coal it takes to create that many watts of power add in the burn rate and the off gasing of it and I would be willing to bet that the pollutants will be the same.

That being said use what ever you want to get your tilling done. Me personally I don't like to use mine but once a year. The soil while light and fluffy when I till it become hard as a rock when it is saturated and dries out quickly. When you till you break up the thousands of miles of worm tunnels that make the soil naturally friable. I cultivate the top two inches of the soil to allow the transmission of oxygen down as well as water. Below that two inches tends to be soft and crumbly due to the worm activity. This is my experience and may not be yours.

Just my two cents.

Carl

Now granted the steam and smoke is alot cleaner than it was before the scrubbers but is still mighty yellow coming out of there.

You're seeing *yellow* smoke? What plant are you referring to? Exhaust from a power plant should never be yellow -- unless the ambient lighting was yellow, in which case the steam might look yellow too (just an optical illusion). But the actual color never ever be yellow, black, green, or purple with pink polka dots :). It should be white (the color of H2O steam cooling into droplets).

Now if the water scrubs this SO3 and it liquifies what happens to it then?? No matter how you slice it, it is still there.

If you scrub it with water without fixating it, then you have sulfuric acid, which is a valuable industrial chemical used to make all kinds of things (probably half the things in the room you're in were manufactured, at some stage, with sulfuric acid). More often, it'll react with chemicals used in the scrubbing that are designed to be consumed -- sodium or calcium compounds. This leaves you with sodium sulfate or calcium sulfate. Sodium sulfate is the mineral mirabilite, one of the world's major commodity chemicals, is invaluable in paper production, and has been used since ancient times as "glauber's salt", a mild laxative. Calcium sulfate is a dessicant (used for drying things), its dihydrate is known as "gypsum", and its hemihydrate is better known as "plaster of paris". Not exactly problem chemicals there.

The only real way to figure that out would be to calculate the required wattage it takes to run the tiller for a length of time and calculate line loss from the power plant through the lines and transmission loss from the sub stations and so on and so forth then figure out how much coal it takes to create that many watts of power add in the burn rate and the off gasing of it and I would be willing to bet that the pollutants will be the same.

Which I just did, with pessimistic assumptions all the way for the electric side. But don't take my word for it; want me to link you to some professional calculations done on electric cars? Note that comparing electric cars to gasoline cars isn't even fair, because gasoline tillers are much worse polluters, gallon per gallon, than gasoline cars because they hardly have any pollution controls.

Again, I'll reiterate: there's a reason that there's a push by environmentalists for electric cars, and it's not because they're so much cheaper to operate (which they are).

Just as an example of how much worse small gasoline engines are than car gasoline engines (which are, in turn, worse than electric motors), here's an article about lawnmowers:

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/article.cgi/esthag/2001/35/i11/html/es0002565.html

The use of a catalyst, which lawnmowers and tillers don't use, reduced most emissions from 30-50%. Most critically, it reduces PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon) emissions by 90%. PAHs are particullary nasty because many of them are carcinogenic (in fact, PAHs are what cause much of the cancer risk from smoking cigarettes).

Yet, a lack of catalyst isn't the only problem that small gasoline motors have, environmentally.

Wait a sec... Why would you think a 2 stroke motor isn't as efficient as a 4 cycle auto motor?

2 Stroke motors generate more power because of the way the operate. Also, no emissions control, like a cat on a gas motor, doesn't make it less cleaner then a motor with a cat.

What would you say if I told you there are 2 stroke motors that meet/exceed California's 3 Star CARB rating without the use of particle trap or catalytic converter? I have two 1st generation 2 strokes that meet and exceed (in some areas) 2 STAR CARB standards.

As for Coal burning power plants, you're talking best case scenario for them being clean source of power. There are wavers given all the time so they don't have to meet current EPA guidelines for emissions. In fact, there a program through government that helps fund unclean coal burning plants that's been in the books for decades. Here's a recent article speaking to how dirty a coal fired plant is. Not in detail, but it gives you an idea of some of the hype that groups like the Sierra Club is pushing.

There's something else that needs to be stopped, that's being pushed by "Environmentalists." It's the Ethanol hype. Ethanol has recently been proven to just as much or more smog then gas. Ethanol has less BTUs then gas causing less MPG, and horse power. Ethanol burns more fuel to transport it from A to B. Ethanol can't be pumped through pipelines because it will eat away at the pipes. Since it's gotta be transported via rail or truck, you're burning more fuel just to move it, which causes more pollution. Corn now goes to Ethanol production so there's less food for us and the animals feed on it. Man, it seems Ethanol is all hype and it's just costing us more $$$'s without being any cleaner.

BTW, I do agree that electric motors are better at creating low end torque. As for example, there are trains that have diesel motors to generate electric to drive electric motors. The reason is because electric motors can make better low end torque.

I don't want to get into ethanol here; it's way off topic. Ethanol is worse in ozone pollution, but is better in many other respects (essentially no sulfur, for example; it also replaces water-polluting additives when used in a blend). And yes, it has less BTU, but it has a higher octane rating. As for food, ethanol only uses up the starch. The remainder gets put into animal feed; it's all protein, cellulose, and minerals that cattle need. Corn is one of the worst ethanol sources out there; it's just dominant here because we already have the corn-farming base. Brazil is a huge ethanol success story due to sugarcane; they went from "gasoline importer" to "gasoline and ethanol exporter"**. This all ignores the potential for cellulosic ethanol or the benefits of having an infrastructure actually designed to work with it.

Ethanol is certainly no silver bullet, but it's not bad, either.

As for Coal burning power plants, you're talking best case scenario for them being clean source of power

No, I'm not talking about the best case. I'm talking about the accumulated average of power in the US. Here, let me get you some stats. Hmm, not finding any primary sources off the bat, but here's a quick secondary (I can dig up a primary if you need one):

Percentage changes with electric vehicles vs. ICEs:

Country HCs CO NOx SO2 Particulates
France -99 -99 -91 -58 -59
Germany -98 -99 -66 +98 -96
Japan -99 -99 -66 -40 +10
U.K. -98 -99 -34 +407 +165
U.S. -96 -99 -67 +203 +122
California -96 -97 -75 -24 +15

I already gave a ref for PAHs on catalytic vs. noncatalytic (10 times as much without a catalytic converter), so I think that stands for itself. Unless you like breathing in carcinogens while you till or having them settle on your soil.

You gave an article on how dirty coal power plants are. Do I even need to give an article on how dirty cars are? How often do you hear people in LA complaining about smog from power plants? ICEs are nasty things, and ICEs lacking any sort of pollution controls, like you find on gasoline engines, are that much worse.

By the way, lest you think that I'm some sort of enviro-nut, my father is a president of Shell USA and a VP of Shell Intl. And even he has complained about the pollution from small engines like lawnmowers (it was in a rant about stupid pollution control regulation that mandates specific types of controls rather than specific pollution targets with financial consequences for not meeting them, so that the industry can choose where to most efficiently focus their efforts). It's simply not true that things like lawnmowers or tillers are as clean as cars, which themselves are not as clean as power plants for the same amount of energy output. ICEs are just too inefficient.

There are wavers given all the time so they don't have to meet current EPA guidelines for emissions.

New Source Review.

Yes, under the Bush admin, waivers have become the de facto practice. That would be relevant if I wasn't talking about national averages. I am talking about national averages. Current national averages of pollutant releases.

One final point for thought. Running an electric engine costs a small fraction as much as a gasoline engine for the same amount of power. You could pay *double* what you pay for electricity and break even. That means you could use solar, wind, or whatever thing currently isn't the "cheapest" power and still come out ahead. Don't trust those "check this box to get your power from a clean source" boxes on your electric bill? Invest in renewables yourself. Or spend the money you save on the environmental issue of your choice. Don't blow it out the exhaust of your ~20-25% efficient, no-pollutant-scrubbing tiller so you can dust your garden with carcinogens.

Hmm .. your dad earned his wealth from the world's utter dependence on the internal combustion engine, yet you are teaching the rest of us about what nasty and evil things they are?

Sounds like you might have some karmic issues to work out.

If they ever come out with a cordless tiller lets you work for an hour on a single charge and can do the job of a 2 HP gas engine you can bet people will start to use them. Dragging a 100' extension cord around the garden however simply does not cut it for most people. We are just tilling our gardens here, not performing an act of contrition.

(quote)"Far more powerful..."

Electric tillers have some advantages, but power isn't one of them. A gas powered tiller typically has about a 5hp engine, while an electric tiller is closer to 1hp. A 5hp electric motor would be a big, heavy, unwieldy thing.

MM(/quote)

To go from Electric power to Gas/Diesel, you have to double the horsepower.

100HP electric = 200HP Gas/Diesel

Also with these small electric tillers you are using the lest efficiencent of all electric motor. Now if you had a tiller that was 220volt or even 440-3 phase, then I would say you have a better tiller.

If they ever come out with a cordless tiller lets you work for an hour on a single charge and can do the job of a 2 HP gas engine you can bet people will start to use them. Dragging a 100' extension cord around the garden however simply does not cut it for most people. We are just tilling our gardens here, not performing an act of contrition.

Do you call vaccuuming an act of contrition? Because it's no worse than vaccuuming.

Oh, and in case you haven't done the math, 12A * 120V = 1440W = 1.93 HP electric, but since electrics have more torque at low RPM where it's needed (i.e., when your tines are going through tough material), it's really more like a 4 HP gasoline. All from a device that's small and light enough I can readily lift it over my garden fences.

Hmm, perhaps a video of the thing in action would convince the people who have trouble believing that this thing is powerful. I may do that later this week.

Quote: "You're seeing *yellow* smoke? What plant are you referring to? Exhaust from a power plant should never be yellow -- unless the ambient lighting was yellow, in which case the steam might look yellow too (just an optical illusion). But the actual color never ever be yellow, black, green, or purple with pink polka dots :). It should be white (the color of H2O steam cooling into droplets)."

Well considering I live down the street from the plant please do not insult my intelligence. In fact from what you say the only thing that comes out of those towers is steam. Who is living in a fairy tale now. I invite you to come down and see the smoke for your self. In fact you can really see it when the steam dissipates and it leaves the yellow smoke to drift off for several miles. Oh yes the location Cumberland City, Tennessee, c'mon down and see us.

For some reason you keep comparing the tiller to the car. Now if I rode my tiller to my office every morning I would be concerned, and have a sore backside. But I use it a total of about one hour a year. Line me up and shoot me, I am killing mankind and my family.

What makes me laugh is how you want to preach to everybody about saving the earth and yet you profess to use non-renewable resources to achieve your tilling, with the brief introduction of solar wind or whatever is not cheapest. Leave it to a oil baron to want the people to use up all renewable resources so they can get and stay rich as Hades. Have you ever seen a strip mine or the people it displaces? Or have you seen what coal mining has done to ump-teen thousands of workers? My grandfather and his brothers had to be raised in an orphanage because of coal mining.

You profess that it is clean but you don't look at the real cost of it. Mining coal is not a clean process. Why not spend your energy trying to get different sources of power, sources that are sustainable? Wind, wave, water, solar, algae sources, etc.

My point is that my use of my tiller for maybe one hour each year is not killing the planet. It infact produces far less pollutants per year than the TVA down the road.
What it produces, the timber and environment can absorb and filter and capture that pollution. And hey if I eat it chances are I am going to crap it out.

I don't mean to be argumenative but I cannot stand it when people talk, or in this case, type down to everybody else. I will close in saying that everybody should do what they can do and feel comfortable doing and able to afford to make them happy in the garden. This is gardening and this morning I picked my first zuchinni, that makes me happy.

Happy gardening to all.

Carl Edwards

PS I use a solar powered electric fence charger, so I am not a complete unbeliever.

Personally I think a tiller is an invitation to a garden so big you can't care for it. And if you're using a tiller for an hour a year, then it's far more economic to hand dig.
Maybe if I had a one acre garden, I'd feel differently. As it is I start in early spring, turning under the cover crop to make rows for sugar snap peas and then continuing on to plant beets, swiss chard, kale and then, as the season progresses, tomatoes, peppers, beans. Still to go in some basil plants and the cucumbers. Started mulching tomatoes today and need to cut back stalks on garlic and elephant garlic which were planted last fall.
As I hand dig, I can remove the few perennial weeds, bury any stones that surface and work in a layer of compost. Tilling in witch grass is a recipe for disaster - each piece of root turns into a new plant. But pulling out the roots as I dig has pretty well eradicated it. I used to use a sharp spade or spading fork but now I've gotten a lot older, I use a small shovel, light weight so it is easy for me to make the dirt fly.

Well considering I live down the street from the plant please do not insult my intelligence.

Please do not interpret the word "should" as "is".

In fact from what you say the only thing that comes out of those towers is steam. Who is living in a fairy tale now.

Please do not add the word "only" into my sentences and then make fun of me for it.

In case nobody has ever told you this, let me go ahead and do so: straw men are very annoying. Don't do it. Period.

Oh yes the location Cumberland City, Tennessee, c'mon down and see us.

That's what I requested; thanks. You could have simply said it without all the snark. This would be TVA's "Cumberland Power Plant" (CUF), which has one of the tallest chimneys in the world (which would explain why you can see it so well). In 1995, CUF installed a FGD (Flue Gas Desulfurization) system, which reduced sulfur emissions by a whopping 95% (comparing the two plume studies, TVA's 1978 study and their 1998/1999 study). According to TVA's most recent study, "In fact, it was difficult to accurately estimate Cumberland's contribution to particle mass in this study because it was so small relative to variation in the background.". Translation: there's more fluctuation in *natural* aerosols in the area than the power plant contributes.

Here's some pictures of CUF from all over the net. I'm looking, and not seeing any yellow. Does it only happen at certain times? ED: Ah, this next article mentions it :)

Now, let's look at this power plant for a comparison to the rest of the US. About half of the US's power comes from coal. CUF, in particular, burns a high sulfur coal -- 3% sulfur -- making it one of the dirtiest types in use. While 95% of the old emissions were eliminated, the scrubber encouraged the condensation of the remaining sulfur into just the right size droplets to refract light. In short, it cleaned up your air like crazy, but made what little pollution was left more visible.

Why do you see so much smoke from CUF, then? Because CUF is bloody huge. It's two 1300 MW units. When operating at full capacity, 2.6 GW is the equivalent power of 3.5 billion car horsepower. That's the equivalent of 16 million hummer H3s driving around. I.e., if the entire population of New York City decided to drive a Hummer at the same time, that's what it would be like.

For some reason you keep comparing the tiller to the car. Now if I rode my tiller to my office every morning I would be concerned, and have a sore backside. But I use it a total of about one hour a year. Line me up and shoot me, I am killing mankind and my family.

One hour of mowing (same sort of engine as a tiller) releases about as much PAHs as 100 miles of driving, as per a reference I already supplied. Furthermore, you're not just releasing them into the air. You're standing right behind the thing breathing it in, and inviting the chemicals to settle on your garden soil.

Yes, automotive gasoline consumption is worse than home equipment use due to how much people drive. So? Machine guns are much better killers than handguns. Should we hand out handguns at every street corner?

What makes me laugh is how you want to preach to everybody about saving the earth and yet you profess to use non-renewable resources to achieve your tilling, with the brief introduction of solar wind or whatever is not cheapest.

If all fossil fuels were gone and the grid had to switch completely to renewables, I'd be tilling my garden just fine. And still for cheaper per amount of tilling than you currently spend on your polluting gasoline tiller.

Yes, it is still cheaper. Let's do the math. 1.44 kW engine. Till for an hour (let's ignore how much faster I can till with this thing than my old gasoline tiller). That's 1.44 kWh. Around here, that's about 10 cents of electricity. That'd buy you 4 1/4 fluid ounces of gasoline (not even counting motor oil). That's half the volume of a can of coke. Think you can till for an hour on that?

Yes, we're talking about very small costs here. I never meant for this discussion to grow into such a big deal. The point, though, is that electric *is* environmentally better (far better with small engines), more powerful for the same size tiller, and cheaper.

Leave it to a oil baron to want the people to use up all renewable resources

Was that a typo?

so they can get and stay rich as Hades.

My father is well off, but not "rich as Hades". Annual income is in the "low to mid hundreds of k" per year (not going to disclose the exact amount), not the millions, tens of millions, or hundreds of millions that you're probably picturing. His favorite leisure activity is backpacking in the wilderness. My parents plan to retire to farmland in Indiana, where my mother wants to open up a shelter for abused animals.

Not exactly what you were picturing from some big evil oil company executive, now is it?

You probably didn't know, for example, that Shell and BP are two of the world's biggest solar cell producers and two of the biggest investors in wind. Shell is the biggest stakeholder in the London Array, too, which will provide 1/4 of London's poower when complete. They're also among the top hydrogen and carbon sequestration researcher funders, and two of the company's chancellors have publicly campagned to *encourage* global warming controls.

Again, probably not what you pictured from an oil company, now is it?

Have you ever seen a strip mine or the people it displaces? Or have you seen what coal mining has done to ump-teen thousands of workers? My grandfather and his brothers had to be raised in an orphanage because of coal mining.

As though oil was some miraculous product that comes up and is refined without any harm to the environment. As a child, I lived for two years in Texas's "Golden Triangle" -- Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange. Port Arthur was, at the time, considered the most polluted city in the US because of the concentration of refineries and chemical plants, due to its abnormally high cancer rates. In Nederland, where I lived, you could walk out at night and, every other night, see the entire horizon in a particular direction lit up by the refinery flare towers, even though the refineries were dozens of miles away. The one memory that really stuck in my mind of the area was how few of the houses in our area had trees. Things hated to grow there, even though this used to be part of Texas's "Piney Woods". My family planted three; only one survived. Don't lecture me about living near industrial pollution.

Why not spend your energy trying to get different sources of power, sources that are sustainable? Wind, wave, water, solar, algae sources, etc.

Guess whose tiller would run off such sources -- your gasoline tiller or my electric? I am *not* trying to encourage the use of coal -- just pointing out that even coal, dirtiest of the fossil fuels, runs an electric engine cleaner than gasoline runs an ICE, and that the problem is worse on small engines without pollution controls. This is a widely accepted scientific fact, and I've provided references over and over for it. I, too, want renewable power. I even wrote a spreadsheet to calculate costs for different windpower configurations (sadly, it determined that the only remotely economical configurations required a tower taller than where I live allows).

My point is that my use of my tiller for maybe one hour each year is not killing the planet. It infact produces far less pollutants per year than the TVA down the road.

And my point is that your tiller doesn't have 3.5 billion HP, the energy production of CUF at full capacity.

What it produces, the timber and environment can absorb and filter and capture that pollution. And hey if I eat it chances are I am going to crap it out.

Or get a tumor. Because that's what carcinogens like PAHs do, and your standing behind a tiller for one hour means you're breathing as much as you would from leaning over the tailpipe of a car as it drives a hundred miles.

Came across this on the Weather Channels "All-Weather Gardening 101"

"Let the hot sun work for you by tilling unused areas of the garden and expose the soil to the heat. This will kill nematodes and young weeds. After a couple of weeks repeat tilling to bring more weed seeds and nematodes to the surface"

I prefer diesel power! I have a gas powered tiller but the tractor with the 6' tiller does a much better job. I can till my 20' x 80' garden in 15 minutes. I think I might even double the size this fall. BTW...what is a good fall cover crop to plant and what's a good place to get seeds?

>>>I prefer diesel power! I have a gas powered tiller

How come you don't use an electric one?

I USED TO TILL, BUT WILL NEVER TILL AGAIN. LASAGNA GARDENING IS THE DEFINITELY BEST WAY TO GO. BILL W.

>>>I prefer diesel power! I have a gas powered tiller
How come you don't use an electric one?
Because it would take me days to till through field grass and clay with an electric tiller when it takes me 15 minutes to do it with the tractor. Also, I don't have a 600' extension cord. Oh...I could use my genarator and electric tiller but that wouldn't make much sense.

DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS, BILLTEX.

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>>>>I can't imagine an electic tiller doing the job of a gas tiller.

I feel the same way.
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Anyone that really knows anything about the subject does too, unless they are trying to defend previous ludicrous statements. He he he.

>>>Anyone that really knows anything about the subject does too, unless they are trying to defend previous ludicrous statements. He he he.

Exactly

>>>>How come you don't use an electric one?
Because it would take me days to till through field grass and clay with an electric tiller when it takes me 15 minutes to do it with the tractor. Also, I don't have a 600' extension cord. Oh...I could use my genarator and electric tiller but that wouldn't make much sense.

I wasnt serious, just pulling your leg :)