I'll go first. Easy...check out a Mantis. Now, you're not going to till up an acre or even half of one very fast with one of these....but it would easily do a "nice" sized garden plot. And yes, an average female can operate these easily. I'm a bit on the "round" side and short...and I've never had a problem. I'm pushing 60 and can easily carry it around because it's so light. It digs down to almost 12 inches. The nice thing about this is if you have a garden straight in the ground ... it will fit nicely into spaced rows to keep down the weeds. I have raised beds that are about 4 x 20 and we use ours in those too. Last I checked they're around $400.....but well worth every penny. We've had ours for at least 7 years and it requires minimal upkeep. All we've done is check the oil and run the gas out of it at the end of the season.

We have other members that can tell you about some of the larger machines. One of those would just drag me up our drive and out on the road before I could kill the engine.

Paula

Like Paula, I've got a Mantis cultivator and use it when needed, though not nearly as often as I once did. I love my Mantis which I've had for around 8 or 9 years. Prior to owning the Mantis, we owned a similar small cultivator made by a different company and it wasn't nearly as good. It broke down often, was often difficult to impossible to start and just didn't cultivate the soil as well. If anything ever happens to my Mantis and it cannot be repaired, I'll simply buy another one. I used the cultivator for many years to work organic matter as deeply into the soil as possible during the years we were building our garden and working to make the soil much better than what we started out with.

I have to add that now that our once highly-compacted red clay soil has been amended every year since 1999 and is now a brown, loamy, fluffy garden soil, I don't use the Mantis as often as I used to. I'm trying to go no-till with the front garden, which is better for the soil structure, the earthworms, the microbial life in the soil, etc. I just pile on mulch throughout the growing season, largely in the form of chopped up/shredded autumn leaves in the fall and grass clippings the rest of the year, and let it decompose in place on top of the beds. By the time planting season rolls around, the prior season's mulch has decomposed into compost which enriches the soil. Using no-till methods merely builds the soil from the top down. This is the same way that Mother Nature builds the soil in our woodland, and our woodland has gorgeous, rich, loamy soil. Still, it is nice to have the Mantis handy if I decide a particular area of the garden needs more intensive work.

Right now I am contemplating dragging out the Mantis when the soil dries up from the recent rainfall and cultivating the lower end of our sloping garden. This is an area where I generally grow corn, winter squash and other crops that need lots of space to spread out and everything is grown at grade level, not in raised beds, in this part of the front garden. We had record rainfall last year that was roughly twice our usual annual rainfall, including one day when we had 12" in one day and about 24" in one month (May) and I discovered a couple of days ago that a thick layer (up to 2" in some places) of sand and silt has washed down into the lower end of the garden, where it its atop the mulch from last year. I am thinking about just rototilling it all together to mix the sandy/silty stuff into the rest of the soil. If the soil will dry out, the Mantis will do that very quickly.

We also have a very large rear-tine tiller that I could not operate to save my life, so it is a good thing that my life doesn't depend on me being able to use that big tiller. It is too powerful and just drags me across the ground, so I know better than to even try to use it. We used that big powerful tiller to break up our red clay soil that was so compacted that you couldn't possibly use hand tools in it at all in the beginning when we turning fallow farm land/cow pasture in to a garden. We started small the first year, and enlarged it a bit every year for the next several years. That first year, even the big rear-tine tiller largely bounced off the compacted clay and it was hard to make it dig in and break up the soil surface. Every year after that, it got easier, but after about 5 or 6 years, we stopped doing that, preferring to use the smaller and more manageable soil cultivator that preceeded our Mantis. It wasn't until we got the Mantis, though, that I was really happy with using a small cultivator.

Several years ago we broke ground out back behind the barn for a second fenced garden plot that would give me more space for crops like corn, squash and watermelons that use up a lot of territory. The soil there is sandy/silty for the most part, but there is one area with a fairly dense reddish-brown clay. I used the Mantis to break up the sandy/silty area but left the clay area for Tim to break up wih the big, rear-tine tiller. As it turned out, that tiller just bounced off the clay and wouldn't dig into it and break it up. Tim was getting really frustrated with it, so I suggested that I at least try with the Mantis to see what happened. Well, wouldn't you know it....the Mantis actually broke up the clay although I had to go very slowly and make several passes over the same area. To be honest, we haven't used the big, rear-tine tiller since then. It sits in the barn and takes up space and we just use the Mantis for whatever we need to do.

Our son now is building his home (himself, with his own two hands, paying as he goes and it seems to be such a slow process) on a part of our acreage and he intends to put in a big garden next year after he finishes building his house this year. He intends to use the big tiller to break up the ground. We'll see. I'm betting he'll end up using the Mantis cultivator.

Dawn

Well that sounds like two votes for a mantis, I will definitely need to look at that one. It sounds like something I could use without supervision :) Paula I was also thinking about row access and you answered that for me.

We are starting a new garden plot as we have also just finished a new build, it took a little over a year, but we did it ourselves as it sounds your son is doing Dawn. For this reason we didn't have much of a garden at all last year and I desperately missed it. Once the house was built we moved the old hay lot which is a fenced area a little behind the house. I'm thinking this might be an excellent area with less cost on a total new fence also. It will definitely be some work to get the ground workable though.

My husband is convinced we will need both types of tillers, although I think he just wants a new toy!

Years ago I used a Mantis and it is great. It does take time to till clay so be patient. I am starting all new beds and all are on clay. I am not tilling yet, I am trying all no till. Time will tell, till or no till that is the question.

BCS - The best tiller on earth.

http://www.bcsamerica.com/

I bought one at Jernigans in Broken Arrow about 15 years ago. It is still going strong. Jernigans is long gone now, but I think that there is a dealer in Sand Springs now.

Earth wise electric corded here. I can use it everywhere I need it . Goes through everything like butter, wires and cables included

The Mantis only weighs 20 pounds. I can use it and I weigh 105 on a good day. It is also sturdy and after 4 years we have had no repairs.

I've had three gas powered Mantis tillers over the years. Loved them, and hated them. Every spring my husband would have to overhaul the carburator, finally get it going and go back to work. They would run for a short time and I could never get them to start again. I loaded up all my old ones and went back to Smith Gardens in OKC where I'd purchased them. They gave me $75 as a trade-in (for old parts) and I bought an electric Mantis. Best thing I've ever done. I've had it for over 5 years now and it starts every time (haha) and I don't have to wait for hubby to be home to use it. I HIGHLY recommend the electric. It tills just as powerful as the gas ones do.