3pt tiller, walk behind tiller, or disc harrow?

[TrentonMaple]

I'm new to agriculture and small scale farming. I have a big family and we're trying to become more self-sufficient in food production. I'm trying to decide what would be the best attachment from a cost perspective and efficiency to prepare our family garden, pictured below. The garden will be new this year on never-been-tilled soil. I've broken it up with a subsoiler so the topsoil and grass can rot a little over the winter. I know the soil needs work and enrichment, so I plan on tilling compost and manure into it several times the first year.



I'd like to get a 3pt tiller, because I like to use to my tractor and it's fun. But they're not cheap, and for the handful of times I'll use it per year, I'm worried it may be overkill. Also, my garden is not huge.

A walk-behind tiller is almost 2/3 the cost of a 3pt. While a 3pt tiller makes my garden look small, a walk behind makes it look huge!

Another thought I had was just to find an old disc harrow and use that, although I don't think I'll get a nice seed bed with it.

I would very much appreciate advice or suggestions.

 

[Utopia Texas]

Here on the Texas Gulf Coast the greatest problem with gardening is weed control after the garden is planted. In early Summer after good Spring rains weeds can get 3 feet tall in a garden and make a huge mess. If you set your rows apart the correct width a walk behind tiller makes easy work of weeds though there will still be weed pulling in the rows. My family has a 2 acre garden twice a year and cultivation of weeds with the tractors can only be done when the vegetables are small and before the tomatoe cages go up. After the vegetables are in and established I actually use my dinky electric tiller the most and it keeps my small portable generator tuned up with fresh gasoline.
PS- If you decide on a walk behind tiller be sure to study up on the tines below the engine type and tines behind the engine type. In my experience the tines behind engine are easier to handle.

 

[AmericanTractorDriver]

I'd watch for a deal on a 3pt tiller even if you do something else in the interim. If you can save to afford it, $1k for a 3pt tiller is a good investment in my eyes. (Wait and watch for one in good mechanical shape with a lot of life left in the tines. Paint can be touched up)

We tilled a garden approx 2k square feet with a walk behind for 2 years. Then found a 3pt tiller when we expanded the garden to 6k square feet (BTW 6k of garden is a lot).

The 3pt tiller easily did in 20 minutes what could have taken me days to do with a walk-behind, and it did a better job.

You may find a place that will rent you a 3pt this year. Here our local rental place requires the you rent their tractor and trailer with the tiller, so it wasnt economically logical to us.

We spaced all the rows 48" apart so we could get the tactoral over the crops. Assuming a short crop like carrots or cabbage etc is next to your tomato row, you can drive over the short crop to cultivate between the short crop and tomatoes. Watch for a 1-row cultivator with the six spring arms for $100-125 on cragslist. Ours needed cleaning and paint, and the teeth are fairly worn, but it works.

And whatever you do, be agreesive in pulling weeds out early, especially any near plants that will require hand cultivation. Way easier to pull when small. Also seems to be a little easier when the ground is moist.

Good luck and let us know how the garden goes! It's a lot of work, but fun and rewarding. This will be our fourth year and we are still total newbies, learning every day

 

[Daver1963]

:welcome: to the forum.
You say you have a big family and I'm looking at your garden size and thinking "I guess they only want a meal or two out of it." I don't know what you are going to plant, but with just my wife and I we have a garden close to 1/4 acre. We use a 2 bottom plow, 3pt tiller, and walk behind tiller. I imagine after the first year you will want to expand if you can.
As AmericanTractorDriver said I would recommend checking Craigslist or some other means for a used 3pt tiller and look for a new walk behind tiller for between the rows. I got a good deal on my plow and got it because I was tilling ground that hadn't been used for a while and the tiller just didn't go deep enough. If you don't want to invest in a plow you might check and see if someone local offers a service to plow gardens. I only say that because some vegetables need deep roots and a tiller will only go so deep.

 

[Utopia Texas]

Also be aware that over a long period of time the over use of a three point tiller can drastically alter the composition of the soil and physically break it down where it has lost the microscopic air pockets and holds too much water. We are in the Brazos River flood plain here in Texas and have some of the best sandy loam soil any gardener could imagine. Though we add 4-5 tons of pecan shells to the garden every year from our pecan orchard/processing plant my father repeatedly overused the 3 point tiller endlessly during the garden season when weeds were minimal and after 15-20 years the garden plot was 6-8 inches lower than the surrounding land and held water like a pond after rains. I have since moved the garden plot over and only aggressively till once during the initial pre-planting phase twice a year. Be aware that 3 point tillers spin much faster and pulverize the soil much more than any walk behind tiller. In some cases you can till until the soil is like talcum powder which removes any air holding capacity.

 

[tcreeley]

I have a harrow, I used to use a troybilt tiller, a small tiller, and a Cub tiller. I have a hiller/bedder on my tractor. When walking was no big deal- walking behind a tiller was ok. Walk behinds are slow, tedious and require some arm strength - too much for my 5'3" wife. We have an old farmall cub disk harrow and a farmall single plow. They work fine- but you need some maneuvering room. They are not 3 pt implements, you tow them. Harrowing gets you ready for the tiller if you want a fine bed for gardening in. Either way, you need to do a lot of steel rake work. I minimized that by getting a hiller/bedder to make rows and raised bed - useful with the heavy summer rains.
I got tired of weeding and every summer it was a fight to see if the weeds would hide everything. The last two years I went to biodegradable row mulch (looks like black plastic). No more weed problem. The covers are black and bio-degradable. I run a drip hose down each row and that makes watering simple and non wasteful. No weeds, soil is warmed in the spring, things grow well.
The other advantage is that I don't compact the dirt running the tractor up and down the rows all summer long.

Well worth it- with these no weeds and you won't need a walk behind tiller.
Johnny's Selected Seeds - Superior Seeds & Gardening Tools

Amazon.com : Bio-degradable Black Mulch-clear Plastic-garden-film-gardening- 0.6 Mil 4ft X 100ft By Grower's Solution : Fertilizers : Patio, Lawn & Garden

Back to your question- if you can do it, get a 3pt tiller - more work with less effort, and it will last your lifetime, can swap to different tractors.
Otherwise I'd do the harrow/ hiller/bedder root.

 

[oldballs]

In my experience of 40 years in gardening a 50 x 100 plot along with other plots of strawberries, asparagus, corn, potatoes, large flower gardens and tree planting, I'd say the most cost effective and convenient tools were my walk behind front tine 8 HP tiller, several type hoes, shovels and (......well, 4 kids and a busy wife).

Now that the wife and kids are gone, I've got this Kubota B2620 with an expensive 54 inch tiller. It is great to sit on my azz and watch the tiller work, but it certainly not cost effective and also produces a lot of other complications for row spacing and maneuvering.

So if you got lots of space, money and hope to sell some produce, I'd get the 3 pt tiller. Otherwise, I'd stick with the manual tools.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[jeff9366]

A Disc Harrow with 7" spaced pans leaves disced soil reasonably flat. A Disc Harrow with 9" spaced pans leaves minor furrows. Disc Harrows are for tilling long fields.

Three Point Hitch mounted, PTO powered roto-tillers are better for gardens. However, unless you have rows the width of the tiller (44"-48"-54"-60") they do not WEED.

Some tractor owners use cultivators for weeding, early, some use small gas powered walk behind tillers. They are all work.

CULTIVATOR LINK: Tractor Cultivator 3 Point Hitch, Single Row & Field Cultivators for Cultivating Potatoes, tomatoes and other crops


What size is your garden now? The sub-soiled part in the picture is 1/16 acre, maybe.

How many family members will weed and harvest garden dependably?

 

[newbury]

For the first year try renting a 3pt and save your dollars for a good used one. In my area a rear tine rents for MORE than a 3 pt. A year or so ago I was able to get a lightly used 5' KK II tiller for $800, after 2 years of searching. They retail for over $2K.

 

[Fallon]

A disk requires a bit of speed meaning you also need room to turn & what not as well. If your garden is cramped or fenced a disk won't really work for you, they are primarily an open field implement.

A tiller is slower than a disk, but usually only takes 1 pass instead of a couple. Some tractors, especially older ones aren't geared slow enough for a tiller. My HST makes that moot. Dam easy to lean on the go pedal to keep the engine fully loaded without lugging it or dropping the RPM.

I was in the same situation minus the manual option & went with a tiller. So far its done the garden once & 2 acres of field. I've been happy with it.