Best of the Country - Garden Tillers

Garden Tillers

Mantis tiller/cultivator

Some people swear they don't need a tiller to work their garden. A common reason I have heard several times is that they have raised garden beds or small flower beds that makes a garden tiller hard to maneuver. While I agree that you may not want to use one of the larger front or rear tine tillers, in this situation, there is another alternative you need to consider. If you are one of those that believe that a tiller is too big, too heavy, too hard to control, the small tiller/cultivator which Mantis made famous very well may change your mind.

When my brothers and I were growing up, we hated the old orange Montgomery Ward tiller my Dad owned when we got ourselves in trouble and had a sentence to serve. We would often find ourselves in the garden either pulling Johnson grass or tilling the garden with that orange monster. It would absolutely beat you to death, bucking like a crazed mule through the hard black Texas gumbo that made up the family garden.

Front tine tiller

By the end of the day, we felt like our arms were made of Jello, not to mention our backs. Front tine tillers are machines not dissimilar to a medievil torture device, but they did do the job even if a kid had a hard time appreciating the result. After I became an adult and had flower beds gardens of my own to till, I opted to avoid tillers and use a spading fork, hoe and rake. The mere mention of the word tiller would evoke a flashback and make me groan and protest.

After all the kids moved away from home, rear tine tillers became more affordable and my Dad bought one. Since I had moved to another state and wasn't close enough to see the work he put into his garden, I had no firsthand knowledge of the differences between a front tine and a rear tine tiller. They were both tillers as far as I was concerned and I wanted nothing to do with them. Once, though, when my parents came for a visit and seeing the work I had planned for my yard, my Dad suggested I buy a tiller to make the work easier. The flashback hit me and, as you can expect, I summarily rejected his advice and did it by hand.

Many years after that, my parents moved to a retirement park, and my Dad gave me the Mantis tiller he had had for probably 20 years. To be nice, I accepted it, even though it was a tiller. I don't know how many hours it had on it, but I can tell you it had been used often and hard every year on a large garden. My Dad always had a big garden. Being almost worn out at this point, it was very hard to start. But since it looked to be so small, and thus incapable of breaking me like a twig, and at my wife's insistance, I yanked the rope until it started. To make a long story short, this little machine did the work of the old Montgomery Ward front tine tiller, with little effort and virtually no damage to either my muscular or skeletal system. It may have sounded like a scene out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it was just the thing I needed to completely work over my flower beds quickly and effortlessly. It was so painless, in fact, that my wife took over some of the tilling chores as long as I would start it for her.

One day, with the tired little Mantis being the only tiller I owned, I surveyed the huge front yard I needed to till while wondering how much it would cost to hire someone to do the work. My Dad, once again, began telling me I should go buy a rear tine tiller. After quietly listening to my seemingly endless tirade about "big" tillers, he told me that the rear tine tiller were really nothing like the old front tine tillers.

MTD rear-tine tiller

Like a door-to-door salesman, he tirelessly professed the qualities of rear tines. Since I had come to the conclusion that it would cost me a small fortune and was hardly the manly thing to do, I decided to become a less than proud owner of a shiny red MTD rear tine tiller. After making the first swipe around a 1/4 acre yard, I decided my Dad was indeed a wise man. This tiller succeeded where the Mantis would have failed, covering large areas at a slow, steady pace. After a couple of hours with it, you knew that you had done something, but it was not brutal at all.

This past year, the old Mantis finally wouldn't start at all. After taking it into the shop for a tuneup, the man told me it would cost as much to fix it as it would to buy a new one. So, I bought my wife a new one for her birthday. Now before you start thinking that that was a thoughtless thing that only a guy would think of doing, you should know it was her idea. She had come to love the old Mantis. It had freed her from having to rouse me out of my laziness to till the flowerbeds or garden. After getting the new Mantis, which starts on the first pull of the rope, I am convinced that the Mantis is simply the best tool for the job when the job is tilling in small, tight places. It's light, it's fast and does a great job in raised garden beds and flower beds. It will edge a lawn and with additional attachments, de-thatch, aerate, dig holes, and allow you to "sculpt" a landscape. It is worth every penny it cost us. And there are many other brands available, modeled after the little Mantis. The original Mantis, though is my choice in this class of tiller/cultivator.

As great a tool as the Mantis is, however, the rear tine tiller is the best tool for larger jobs in the garden and yard when a larger tractor is too much. They are both among our most prized garden tools. But the front tine tiller is still a very effective torture device. Especially for kids...

< Prev		Next >

[ Back ]

Vintage

Something Different for Joomla