It would be hard to beat that price, but I dont know anything about that tiller. A lot will depend on the type of soil you have and how much you use a tiller.

Don't expect a lot from a small tiller. They all do what they are designed to do but it is easy to over work a small one.

some things to look for is (1) can you service the gear box?
(2) are you close enough to electricity, the farther away you are the larger the cord will need to be. (3)you should run all outside power through a ground fault for safety reasons.

If I could get by with that small of a unit, electric would be my first choice. The one you have listed is less than half the cost of my cheapest used one.

I have had two of the type that fit on a string trimmer and burned the gear box out of them in my heavy soil. The pick type tines are much easier on the gear box. To see what the pick tines look like see the Mantis tiller.

Larry

I know nothing about that brand and have not used an electric tiller. I have had a small Mantis for several years and it works great in my garden. I have nice improved soil now, but I started out with lawn.

I have an electric tiller and, if you're wanting to till ground that is either covered with grass or never been tilled before, it is not going to be sufficient.

Can you rent a tiller? That is what I did for one of my beds. I have a rental place not too far up the road from me.

My other beds were built via lasagna type layering. MUCH easier...and better on my hands. :) I burned my palm on the tiller by putting in exactly where it said "don't touch". LOL I think I tripped over something and put my hand out to catch myself. OUCH.

i bought this tiller back in march and i been tilling like crazy. It had great reviews so i pulled the trigger and couldnt be happier. I tilled my garden plot 20x30 breaking new ground through bermuda. It worked great and was easy to handle. It would jump if i hit a big root but other than that it stays pretty still. It took me about 3-4 hours to till my garden plot down about 10 inches. I had to stop every 10 minutes to clean the tines out also. It is worth every penny.

Brad, I feel the same way about my Mantis and can't imagine not having it. I have had big tillers that I had to have worked on before every season. We gave them away and bought a Mantis. It does a much better job than any of our others ever did.

I did benefit from this thread though because I realized how little preventive maintenance I have done to mine, so I reviewed the instructions, changed the air filter, and cleaned it up good so we can add grease in the morning. My husband said we have probably had it ten years, so it may be time to change the spark plug. Mine has been a trouble free work horse. If I need something larger I will buy a tractor. LOL

Thanks so much for all of the helpful and insightful responses. I'm sorry I didn't respond earlier. Night shift is KILLING me!

Anyhow, I would love one of those nice, powerful gas-powered tillers but since we only plan to be in Oklahoma another 2.5 years or so...I just don't think that it's a worthwhile investment for us at this time as we won't bother to take a tiller with us when we move across the country. So, something small like this electric tiller might work for us (especially after considering brad6622's review of it here) as we might be able to sell it used for $50-75 and get around half of the money invested back.

I also hadn't ever considered renting a tiller! What great advice. I will definitely check into it. I'd imagine there are places around Stillwater that rent tillers. My only issue is that if I can't fit it into my 4-door, small car...it won't be going anywhere haha!!

Although I'm dreading another drive down there before moving in May...I think we might go down and at least get a soil sample and have it tested. I'd like to get a jump start on the garden as soon as we're moved in...considering all of the advice that has been provided in addition to my own research, I think that we'll try to plant in June-August for a fall harvest.

In October of last year I had our first baby and he was stillborn. So I'm taking a particular interest in gardening. I figure plants won't get so sick of being taken care of...like my poor dog has! Haha. She is all nurtured out.

I am so sorry to hear about the loss of your child. That is a very difficult and painful experience and I hope you find healing and comfort in gardening.
Plants generally thrive on lots of care.....and you may find the dog will get jealous of the garden and the time you give it and may demand more attention. I have a couple of cats who love the garden in general but sometimes I have to put them in the house because they come into the garden when I am weeding or planting and demand attention by putting themselves between me and the plants or even by trying to lie down on newly transplanted plants. (That quickly gets them the attention they are craving....but also earns them a "time out " session in the house.)

With this small electric tiller, I think it would work fine on a relatively small area as long as you don't have very hard compacted clay or very rocky soil. I use my little Mantis tiller/cultivator for almost everything and I feel like it outperforms our big rear time tiller on everything except the worst, hardest, most compacted dry-as-a-bone and hard-as-concrete clay. I did go to some websites that sell the tiller you're looking into buying and read some 1-star negative reviews, so when you read reviews on something you 're planning to buy, be sure you read a variety of 1-star thru 5-star ratings to give you a balanced view of what people say about it.

When discussing tillers, cultivators and even small tractors, how well these work for one person who loves their performance versus someone else who is disappointed in it often depends on whether a person has sandy soil or sandy loam versus badly compacted and dense clay or very rocky soil. Some soils are a lot harder to work with than others.

We rented a large, heavy-duty rear-time tiller our first year here to break up our dense and badly compacted clay. It was worth every penny. The next year we bought a tiller similar to the one we had rented because we knew we'd be enlarging the garden every year for the next few years and also that we'd be rototilling organic matter into the soil every year for years to come. I've always had a small gas-powered cultivator like the Mantis ever since we moved here in 1999. Of the various brands we've had (Ryobi and Craftsman) prior to purchasing the Mantis several years ago, I have found the Mantis to be far superior to the others.

This winter I broke ground for an additional garden plot in a separate location from our big garden and broke up several thousand square feet of badly compacted sandy/silty soil with my little Mantis. We only had to use the big tiller for 200 or 300 square feet of clay on the edge of the new garden plot. Small cultivators/rototillers can do a great job on most soils.

I'm just too big of a klutz to use anything electric with a cord when it comes to rototilling soil. I'm pretty sure I'd forget the cord was there....and that would be a problem.

Dawn