A Hand Tiller Will Put You In Touch With Your Garden
There are many people that have no idea what gardeners did before there were gas-powered tillers, well, they used an inexpensive but highly effective hand tiller. Although it is true that you can till any size farm with a manual tiller, it is not really recommended for people that have other things to do with their time. Retired folks that have hours upon hours to spend tilling their personal garden will be fine with one of these, however if you do not have a massive amount of time to spend on your gardening hobby then you may need a powered one. If you have a long handled hand tiller, an affinity for traditional methods and you want to know the proper technique to use it, then you have come to the right place.
If you have a number of homemade hand tiller attachments you can leave them in the shed for this method. You will find that the tiller itself has all that is necessary to accomplish cultivation. This method is called double digging and will allow you to incorporate much needed compost into your gardening soil. The first thing that you need to do is to spread the compost over the area of land that you want to till. Move over to the edge of the garden and dig a trench about one foot deep along the entire side. That may seem unusual to some of you, but when you use this method you will be working from one side of the space to the other.
When you finish the first ditch, you will move over a little bit and dig another ditch right next to the initial one. Take all of the soil taken out of the first trench to fill in the second trench. Use this process to make your way all across the garden space. When you arrive at the final trench you will take that soil and fill in the first trench on the far side of the space.
When you are totally done take a rake and level the entire garden space out. This is a manual process and will take a lot of time and effort to accomplish, when compared to a electric rototiller, but the satisfaction you get from the results is far greater. Some folks feel that it is just easier to make your way around the space churning the soil up with a powered model. It is faster but the benefits of this double digging method are greater. Using a large and heavy power tiller can compact the soil once it churns it up while the hand tilling method will leave the soil in a much better condition, which can lead to a better final product in the end.
In this day and age we are all in a hurry and that is why every tool that we use day in and day out is powered by electricity. Sometimes it is nice to step back, relax and utilize the manual methods of days long gone. A hand tiller is a great way for hobby gardeners to experience the way it used to be.
