A buddy of mine bought a used one off of Craigslist I found for him, in very good condition, for like $600 4-5 years ago. It did a very nice job of laying the mulch. His two biggest problems after the first year, was Deer punching holes though the plastic, and weeds popping up through those holes. The other problem was removing, and then disposing of it, when it outlived it's usefulness. He has a lot of weed pressure, and still had weeds coming up, close around the plants, in the holes they punched in, to plant through.
Personally, I use leaves to mulch with. I have a small town nearby that gathers leaves up in town, and they have a huge pile of leaves, free for the taking. I now have a neighbor with a lawn service, that provides leaf pickup in upscale neighborhoods in Columbus. He will bring them to me, saving him from hauling them half way around town, to a mulch facility. They work very well, and not all that hard to put down.
If put down 5-6 inches thick, they make a very good weed barrier. After a few rains, they settle, and compact down to a couple inches thick, making a nice tight mulch. You're able to walk out in the garden, within minutes of a good rain, and not problems sinking in the mud. It also adds a lot of organic matter to the garden. It's pretty well broken down into fine compost the following Spring, and plows down well.
I also use 2-wheeled David Bradley walk behind garden tractors to cultivate, whatever I don't mulch. I plant in 30 inch rows, increasing the amount of crops, in a given space. I have 4 tractors set up with different cultivator shovels & sweeps, for different plant sizes, as the progress. Most, I have around $100 in apiece, so not a lot of overhead.
I've been trying to get my buddy who does the market garden, to try it for 5 years, and pretty well scoffed at the idea. I found a page on Facebook, called "Gardening for Market", that folks are now scaling back on equipment size, with narrow rows like I have, and getting more crop per acre. It is gaining popularity very fast..!! Some of them are farming 5-6 acres with smaller tractors than I have. So now, it has pretty well become the new rage in small farming. Sent the link to my buddy for that page to show him what can be done. Several are even modifying their small cultivators with what is called finger weeders, which are wheels with steel & rubber fingers, set nearly close enough to mesh, set at an angle, and make weeding of root crops such as carrots, etc. totally weed free., running the cultivator through every 4-5 days. A bit pricey for me, for the amount I grow of those vegetables, being they run near $500, for a set of them.
This may not be your cup of tea, but the leaf mulch has worked well for me, for the past 5 years. And we've been gardening with the 2-wheelers since the mid 50's, as far as cultivating. Old hat gardening for me, a whole new frontier for others.
I'll attach a few more pics of my setups. They aren't trailer queens, but run like sewing machines. They earn their keep here.
