I went and bought a SEARS tiller on sale and it was fine for me. It may not be the limosine of tillers, but it works fine for me

I'm a newbie gardener, but I have been reading a lot about Lasagna Gardening being successful with hard clay. If you do a search on that method, you will find a lot on interesting info. I am trying it for my veggie garden this year. I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lasagna Gardening 101

Clay is not difficult to till if it is done when the moisture content is just right. Use your shovel and dig a full shovel of your soil, dump it on the ground. If it sticks to the shovel it is too wet to till. If it breaks up when dumped on to a hard surface it is right to till. If you were not able to dig because you could not get the shovel into the soil it is too dry. Water it and test again every day until it is ready to till. Rent a tiller small enough to handle, extra weight will not help. Use this opportunity to incorporate about four inches of compost into your clay. If you mulch twice a year with compost in three years you won't have to till your soil at all. Al

That's what I am hoping to do soon... I am on the 3rd year in this garden... hoping for no more tilling soon.

Try not to own a tiller. Rent one of the monsters with hydrostatic drive.

There is a period of about two or three weeks after the winter rains end when clay soil is in best condition for tilling. Before that, it's too soggy and will not till well, and walking/tilling it will just compact it more. After that, it will be too hard to till.

The best tiller is a rear-tine tiller. With a rear tine you can put your weight on the handle and froce the tines into the ground. The front time models will just skip across. What I recommend is tilling in steps - an inch or two at a time per pass. Most tillers have height settings for this. After tilling the clay soil, then layer on a few inches of organic compost and till that in. Then let it sit. Add another few inches of compost every season and before long the clay will be more like loam.

There are those who feel that no tilling is the best way to go. I still think it's very helpful to at least break up the clay at the right time and work a lot of compost into it the first year. After that, maybe no-till will work just fine.

I would also try digging few holes, about two to three feet deep, to see if there is any hardened soil layers under the surface.

I would suggest composting with Starbucks free coffee grounds. Lasagna is a huge mess, and you have to wait a long time for it to be ready.

Hi- I'm new to this forum but not to gardening in clay. Ten years ago we moved about 10 miles from a place where I could dig down 12" with just my hands to a place where my yard becomes a slip 'n' slide when it rains.

I bought a tiller and all the gypsum and sand, etc. but the best advice I got from someone who had been gardening here longer was what he called the $6 hole solution. He said that for every $2 plant you dig a hole, treat your clay soil like a pot and fill it with $6 worth of amendments. He also said to keep growing as much stuff as I could because the plant roots and worms would work the soil better than I could.

Ten years later there are spots in my veggie garden that I can dig down 8" with my hands. I gave up the tiller the third year because it was doing a better job than I could have done deliberately of tilling up weed and wild grass seeds and roots and killing worms. A fork is probably the only tool you should be using in your heavy clay soil. A spade is said to seal the cut and wreck the little structure that clay is capable of.

The other best thing you can do is start a compost pile. Not only will it provide the best amendment you can use in your soil, but the worms will be working it 6" into the clay all the time it's cooking. Move your pile around each time you restart it and you're creating new prime planting spots. Then grow things with aggressive roots like potatoes, tomatoes and roses.

It will take time but you can get good results in one area beginning the first year. Good luck with it.

Hi Fruithack,

Could you share why we should try to not own a tiller? I am debating whether or not to get an electric one that seems to get good review on HD: the Ryobi electric for just normal yard. But would definitely like to hear why you advise trying not to own one..

If you have not run a tiller on your soil, renting one first is good insurance that you really need or will use it once you own it. This is especially true if you are considering an electric one. Have you thought about why are so few tillers electric? Al

Another consideration would be to put in raised beds.

We bought the "garden cultivator" attachment for our electric Troy-Bilt EZ-Link system last spring. It's been indispensable for mixing the soil in our raised vegetable beds; it's saved me hours of back-breaking work.

The guy at Lowes told me that it wouldn't work, that it didn't have enough power to claw thru the hardpan clay soil that we have here in Folsom. You know what? He was right, but then again, I didn't have expectations that it would...

It's not heavy enough and it doesn't have the torque to cut thru the Bermuda Grass and clay sod that was in the area where our raised beds now lie. But as Calistoga and Sudsmaster noted above, clay can be worked if the moisture content is right.

First we soaked the area well, then we used a shovel to cut thru the sod and turn over clumps of clay/grass, then we soaked the area again...

Only then did we bring out the "garden cultivator" and used it to break up the clumps, remove the Bermuda rhizomes and eventually blend in loam and compost. It worked very well for this purpose.

As Troy-Bilt does, I refer to it as a "garden cultivator" and not a roto-tiller. I had a gas powered Sears roto-tiller once. It was a bulky, fume-spewing behemoth, that I'm convinced took a year off my life every time I used it. Quite opposite of the effect that I was after by growing my own organic vegetables!!

The main complaint that I have is that rocks of any size will freeze the tines up and I found that I had to stop often to use a cold chisel and hammer to knock them loose.

If you don't expect it to take the place of a real roto-tiller and use it for appropriate purposes, the "garden cultivator" can be a valuable tool...

Mike

Top 10 Reasons not to own a tiller:
10. One more thing to store and maintain.
9. The gas tillers you can afford have cheesy (not Honda) engines that become hard to start once you leave the store parking lot.
8. Electric? Get a grip, shoveling is faster.
7. The bad boy hydrostatic tillers you can rent ( especially when you're breaking virgin soil) kick a@#.
6. Using tillers to till in weeds, grass, or hay is a myth promoted by tiller manufacturers. Read my lips: you're gonna get a tangled gnarly mess in under a minute every time.
5. Catching and holding a 150# pig to give it eye medicine is a walk in the park compared to tilling anything other than sandy loam. If you've got sandy loam, you don't need a tiller.
4. The opportunity cost of tying up money in a piece of equipment you use several times a year is budgetary folly. Got money to burn- hire a gardener!
3. For a mere $160 a day you can rent the mother of all tillers- known as an excavator. Looks like a toy backhoe arm mounted on tracks. Dig tree holes. Dig trenches with dirt piled on side that you push down over manure as it becomes available to make mounded rows. Learning curve to operate is very easy: if you can drive a manual tranny you can run this.
2. RAISED VEGETABLE BEDS. Till with a pitchfork. You were'nt really thinking of not using RB's, were you?
1. The number one reason not to own a tiller is: BORROW THE NEIGHBORS!!!

I have owned both a Troy-Bilt Horse rear-tined tiller and a light Sears front-tined tiller. The rear-tine will definitely dig better and easier, unless you are on the side of a hill, where it becomes a battle of wills between you and the machine. The problem with the rear-tine tiller is that it is not good in tight spaces, like near fences and buildings. It takes a lot of room to maneuver and turn. And do not EVER use any tiller next to a chain link or wire fence. One wrong move and it will wrap 20 feet of wire around the tine shaft, faster than you can imagine. I eventually got rid of the Troy, and have owned a small Sears front-tine unit for about 18 years now. The front-ender is very good for getting into small areas to till up a few square feet in established landscapes, gardens, etc. It will also dig very deeply if you hold it in place. The rear-tine unit can't dig more than a few inches deep, because of the tine shaft.

This is how I make a new garden in clay loam soil:
1. Rent a small tractor with a bucket and tiller.
2. Till the soil as deeply as possible. Make several passes. This is easy, fast and fun with a tractor.
3. Use the tractor bucket to top-dress with an inch or so of coarse sand and an inch or so of organic matter like bark, compost, wood chips, etc. Level with a rake. Do not skip the sand: it will make a permanent improvement in your soil, unlike the organic material. Add lime and superphosphate if needed.
4. Till the amendments in as deeply as possible.
5. Use a rake or shovel to shape the area into raised beds with sloped sides, with low areas in between the beds for walking and kneeling to plant, pull weeds, etc. I usually end up with about 12" depth of amended soil in my raised beds after this step. I don't use 4x4's, rock or anything to make walls for my beds, but you can if you want to. It's a lot of work though.

At this point, your soil is somewhere between loam and sandy loam on the soil triangle, and is ready to produce a beautiful garden for you, right now. It will be even better when the organic materials break down. Your wallet will be lighter, but your back will not be broken. Any future soil preparation can easily be done with a small front-tine tiller.

You have probably heard that sand plus clay = concrete. There may be soils where this is true, but I have yet to find them in 40 years of gardening. I have used this method in New Jersey, Oregon, California, and Washington state, with uniformly excellent results. If this issue worries you, buy a bag of sand and try my method in a small area of your yard, as a test. For more information, Google "soil triangle".

I would be happy to show you "before" and "after" using this method. I presently have gardens near Portland, OR and Kalama, WA, where I have amended heavy soils. If anyone would like to see the results, please email me from the website link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: contact info

the best tiller for clay is none. Use layers of mulch and after 2 months add earthworms. Keep moist but not wet.

I bought a used Sears 8hp front tine tiller for $200.00 After 3 uses it paid for itself (rentals run about $60.00/day). As an earlier poster wrote, dampen the soil before tilling. I tried my on dry soil first and it bucked like a wild bronco. The more horsepower, the better. I would definitely not buy one of the little Toro or Ryobi's. They are only good for established beds with soil that has already been conditioned.

Maximum

Hi Hernando,
My husband and I had the same situation last year: a 12 by 30 foot area covered with plastic sheeting and gravel that had been used as a driveway for 40 years. After removing the plastic and gravel, we tried to till it, with same results as Diana. Then we tried getting the soil wet, but only managed to create a lake.
After that fiasco, we began dumping our grass clippings and leaves on the soil. After eight months, I could turn over the first ten inches of soil easily, and worms and grubs had taken up residence. By spring, we were able to turn over the entire driveway by hand. We put raised beds in one end and amended them further, and planted grass and flowers at the other. The only problem: oppossums and raccoons can now easily dig for delicious fat white grubs in the beds, so we must net the beds until the veggies are big enough to withstand a bit of rough handling.

I had very good luck with clay soil (Delaware) by amending it with sand, bone meal and lime. The sand improves drainage and the bone mean and lime reduce the acidity.

Of course, adding compose is always good.

I agree with the comments to rent a tiler for all the reasons given.

I have not tried the method of mulching without tilling, but think it is worth a try if you have time to wait.

I have hard clay and own a Troy Bilt Horse rototiller. But my garden is 42 feet by 60 feet. Your garden is so small you could turn it over by hand, so I would say you can't really justify buying one. If you are going to rent one get a powerful one, even though you are only doing a small area. Little ones are a joke. My neighbor rented one and I felt so sorry for him. Timing is everything with clay soil. If you try to till it when it is rock hard the rototiller tines will just bounce off it. If you rototill it when it is really wet and soft the clay will stick to everything and pack right down again. You have to wait until two or three weeks after getting a good rain where the soil is slightly moist but not wet. If you are going to add compost rototill it in at the same time.

+1 on the timing. It needs to be done at the midway state between gumbo and concrete.

A rear tine machine with counter-rotating tines will dig in, but needs to be up to the task. Avoid chain-drive machines. I have a large chain-drive tiller out in the shed with a snapped chain as a testament to the toughness of the clay.

I also have a smaller front-tine machine that will do the job at the proper time, but it gives me a real workout.