Will a tiller actually till 8" deep?

[Boria]

I have been looking at a 14" bottom plow to turn the soil over. From everything I have read the bottom plow is only turning over 7" to 8" of soil. I have also been looking at a taylor way 72" tiller that supposedly will till up to 8" deep. If the tiller will till up 8" deep is there really a need for a bottom plow. My soil is sandy/loam and I am going to kill all the grass before I turn up the soil. Would I be just as well off by purchasing just the tiller and not bothering with the bottom plow?

 

[oosik]

i would guess that it is a real reach for any tiller(pto or stand alone) to go 8" deep. I know if you first turn your soil with some type of plow(ex - bottom plow) the tiller will have an easier time and will go deeper. My experience is with a Troy Bilt Horse tiller and I could, under ideal conditions, get it to go 5". To get 8" deep with a pto tiller you will have to go slow so it can dig deep. However, I'm sure someone will tell you about "Tillerous Maximus" that will go to the earths core. Under the right conditions I can get my moldboard plow to go 8 inches. One thing for sure - breaking new ground will not allow the tiller to go to max depth. You can get max depth - whatever that is - when you till already broken ground.
If you are looking to prepare a spot for a home garden then a bottom plow will not break the soil sufficiently. You will need a rototiller, or disk harrow and maybe even a spike tooth harrow.
If it were my choice - I'd go with the rototiller and not really worry if it goes 7" or 8". Very few veggies are going to notice the difference. A rototiller can take you from new unbroken ground to finely tilled soil with one implement.

 

[SSdoxie]

I go over my garden twice with the tiller, second pass allows tiller to sink in deeper. Then I hit with the cultivator to go deeper for moisture absorption. Then when ground is dried for good preparation and ready to plant I till it once more to break up any clumps.

 

[plaindriver]

I have been looking at a 14" bottom plow to turn the soil over. From everything I have read the bottom plow is only turning over 7" to 8" of soil. I have also been looking at a taylor way 72" tiller that supposedly will till up to 8" deep. If the tiller will till up 8" deep is there really a need for a bottom plow. My soil is sandy/loam and I am going to kill all the grass before I turn up the soil. Would I be just as well off by purchasing just the tiller and not bothering with the bottom plow?

We have a fairly hard clay in these parts, along with a healthy compliment of rocks/boulders. In a new area, first I use a subsoiler to rip it up, then remove any large (baseball or larger) rocks/boulders mostly by hand. Then use the ripping fingers on the box blade. Then I do two passes with the roto-tiller, a 54" Gearmore on a JD 750 4WD tractor. On the second pass, I get the wife or son (or whoever I can draft) to ride on the tiller flap. This seems to really enhance the fine-ness of the finished product. I would guess that this process gets me about 6-7" of till depth. After the tilling, I make my rows with a hiller/furrower. But lately here on the Plateau in Tn, we havent had more than 5- days without rain since last May. Absolute worst thing is to have the plot roto-tiller to a fine degree, then get a downpour. That soil will now take at least two wks of no rain before it can be successfully re tilled.

 

[Baby Grand]

One thing you can check is if your 3 point hitch will actually allow the tiller to drop 8" below the soil surface by hitching up the tiller and seeing how far it can drop over the edge of a ditch or wall.
A second thing to check if it can drop that much is the resulting angle of the PTO shaft. Tillers having relatively short shafts, this angle will tend to increase rapidly with every inch of drop.
A third thing you should definitely check is how much PTO shaft overlap (inner/outer) you will have at that depth.
Tilling depth may have something to do with the outer diameter of the tine/scroll assembly.
The most depth I have achieved is maybe 5 or 6 inches after multiple passes, which looks a lot deeper once the soil is fluffed up, but if you actually measure the depth relative to the untilled soil surface, it's a lot less than it looks at first glance.

As oosik said - few vegetables actually need soil tilled that deep. If I ever needed that kind depth I'd go the opposite direction and hill my rows after tilling.

 

[Ken45101]

At least on my 3pt tiller, the side skids limit it's depth. I have thought about removing them entirely, but then the gear box would be riding in the dirt and probably limiting the depth to the same limit as the skids.

I did find, however, that adding a 100#+ weight did help it till deeper.

 

[Spindifferent]

In a new area, first I use a subsoiler to rip it up, then remove any large (baseball or larger) rocks/boulders mostly by hand. Then use the ripping fingers on the box blade. Then I do two passes with the roto-tiller...

Good advice.

I use a reverse-rotation tiller. My process to get as deep as the tiller will go:

First Year:
Subsoil (something like this Agriculture Subsoilers - Monroe Tufline)
Rip (something like this K&M Mfg. Product 3)
Till (something like this TS/TSR60 Landscape Equipment)
Add compost
Till

Second Year:
Rip
Add compost
Till

Third Year:
Rip
Add compost
Till

Fourth Year:
Subsoil
Rip
Add compost
Till

Repeat as necessary. Remember, the person with the most compost wins.

Enjoy!

 

[Gary Fowler]

I think it is useless to try and till more that 5-6". Around my place that is the limit of good topsoil anyway so going deeper is of no value which is the same as in most areas. If you have sandy loam soil, you will likely have the max depth on one pass. You really don't want to till the soil till it looks like powder. I never use more than 2 passes and it is plenty chopped at that point. The tiller goes to the skids in one pass and then they drag under the loose soil on the second pass even with all the rocks I have. My KK II is pretty good about chopping out surface roots also although it does rattle the tiller a bit when hitting them. 2 days ago I tilled an area between some blackberry plants and fenceline which has some large sweetgum trees, it chopped up roots 1.5" in diameter.

 

[jenkinsph]

You can buy commercial tillers that will go down to 11 inches but are expensive and need a larger tractor to run them. For most of us a good tiller is capable of 6 to 8 inches maximum. That is deep enough for everything I plant.

 

[pmsmechanic]

This thread is an interesting read. Some folks have lots of money for toys! I try and get to a garden when there is some moisture but not too much as all you get then is mud balls. I took the skid shoes off my JD660 as all they did was keep the rototiller from digging into the ground. The 660 has a tool bar in the front and I mounted 5 ripper tines on it to help keep the tiller from bouncing and also to keep the tiller from pushing the tractor around. Most of the time I just use 3 for trash clearance. On sod the first year it's tough to get much below 8" of loose soil. In subsequent years though you should be able to go a little deeper each year until you get the depth you want. I don't like to over rototill as every time you work the soil it destroy's organic matter in the soil. Organic matter is the good stuff that compost replaces.