Get The Most From Your Tiller

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The versatile tiller becomes even more so if you have a few accessories handy: One great addition is the furrowing attachment, which is generally used to cut rows for corn, tomatoes, potatoes, etc . but will also dig drainage and irrigation ditches, open up wet spots for more rapid drying and form compost trenches alongside crops.

In addition, the furrower can help you terrace a hillside garden. The makers of the Troy-Bilt advise tilling up and down a slope as a rule, rather than across. If you need to work in the other direction when terracing or cultivating, however, always begin at the top and overlap each newly tilled section with the uphill wheel in the soft, turned soil.

When I ordered the furrowing attachment for my tiller, I asked about other special applications for the machine. That's how I first heard of the accessory dozer blade a fine gadget for plowing snow or cleaning sawdust and manure out of chicken houses and barns. Troy-Bilt's Harvey Johnson said that his son had used the rototiller to help some neighbors build a swimming pool, alternately digging with the tines and shoving the dirt into place with the blade. The dozer attachment is also useful for light-duty grading or to back-fill foundation trenches.

Even if you never invest in any extras for your tiller, you'll still find plenty of jobs for it to do especially during the growing season, when it's an ideal cultivating tool. I find that most nurserymen set their plants so they can till in one direction, then turn and work across the rows at right angles. I'm going to try that next year with my cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower.

As the summer goes on, your rototiller can also help you keep back growth along fence lines (even in areas where the weeds are too rank for most power mowers). And even after harvest you'll still be getting out the trusty machine to plow under a green manure crop, or to turn and chop raw or dried materials into the ground in the late fall.

Come to think of it; the soil in my potato patch is so hard and rocky that my shovel bounces off like a butter knife. I wonder if a tiller can dig spuds!.

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