Let me ask you; is there anything in the world that tastes better than a homegrown vegetable from your garden? If you are like me, and I bet you are, the answer is a resounding, no. For that reason and our love of gardening, being self-reliant we plant our vegetable garden in our backyard. Just thinking about a freshly picked vine ripened tomato from my garden makes my mouth water. A Garden Tiller, ah yes, the mere mention of a garden tool causes pleasant thoughts for most of us, and for others well just let me say, not so pleasant and we will leave it at that.
A garden tiller, a wonderful garden tool that is best used when the soil is not to wet. When you pick-up a hand full of soil and squeeze it to make a ball and it sticks to your fingers, it is too wet. When it crumbles nicely and is not sticky, it is ready for tilling.
Why use a Garden Tiller?
- Getting your vegetable garden ready for planting; soil preparation is the key to successful gardening. Mixing organic materials into your garden is a job well suited to a tiller. Peat moss, manure and compost are, as you know, important things to take into consideration when getting your soil ready to plant, green beans, sweet corn, cucumbers, squash and tomato and pepper plants all thrive and produce outstanding results in well-prepared planting beds.
- Weeding between the rows , in spring before your green beans, corn and squash get to big for a tiller to get between the rows, a good front tine tiller makes weeding them much easier. Controlling the weeds not only makes your garden look better to your neighbors, but also makes your plants a lot healthier. Weeds compete with your vegetable plants for the moisture and plant foods, so remember keep the weeds out of your garden.
- After harvesting your vegetables, there is a lot of plant material left behind. Once you have removed all your tomato cages, poles from the beans and trellises from your cucumbers. What is left is great for your compost bin, or compost heap depending on your size garden. Then if you are like me, run the riding mower over your garden with the deck all the way up, in the highest cutting position. Cut all the tomato plants, bush style green bean plants, corn stalks zucchini plants and any thing else organic into small compostable pieces. Then breakout your trusty garden tiller and mix all that great organic plant material into your garden soil and get a head start on next years vegetable garden.