The Frugal Gardener

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Having said that, there is a world of fabulously expensive but barely useful options out there, just waiting to snag the unsuspecting. For example, a tiny power tiller is useless in my opinion. It will cost more in annual maintenance than the amortized cost of a spade or spading fork. In anything less than a large garden, a tiller becomes a toy, not a tool. If you want one, put it in your recreation budget rather than your garden budget. That is the only way it will make economic sense. Remember that I am talking about a home garden. A good walk behind a rear-tined tiller was indispensable to me in my one person, one acre market garden. If I had gotten much bigger, I would have needed some riding equipment.

After the garden is turned, a garden rake is needed. It performs two basic functions, breaking down lumps in the soil to make a smooth planting surface and disturbing weed seedlings on soil that has not been planted within 10 days of turning. When I turn the soil by hand I generally turn a bed four-feet wide and 25-feet long, then smooth it out with the rake, and plant.

When I hire someone to till it is most economical to have them till the entire garden in one visit. My planting season begins about April 15, and the majority of the garden is not planted until the first week in June. If I have the garden tilled April 15, the unplanted sections will be a weedy mess by June if left untended. This is where the 10day rule comes in. It is just about the most valuable piece of information I have ever imparted to another gardener. Let's say the garden is tilled on the 15th. I mark my calendar for the 25th to rake all the unplanted areas. The planted areas will have been disturbed at sometime during the 10 days, each disturbance setting a date 10 days later for it to be cultivated. This cultivation destroys more weeds easier than any other activity I can imagine. The weed seedlings are then just a very vulnerable single root hair going down and a single stem pushing up. The poor babies don't have a chance. Give them another week and it's a different story!

This raking is really very fast, just skimming the surface. If the surface is smooth and loose enough, the back of the rake actually works best. My favorite rake has a blade on the back that works wonderfully well in my soil.

Note the caveat, "in my soil" as I mentioned "loose soil" before. Soil type depends on the size of particles. Sandy soil is gritty, and clay soil is smooth (because the particles are so small you can't see them). Your soil is probably somewhere in between. If you are new to gardening, you might want to check the soil in gardens in your area. Ask gardeners who have soil like yours what tools they like to use. That information may help you decide what will be best for you.

So much for preparing the soil for planting. You can transplant without any tools other than your two hands. Can't get any cheaper than that. Barbara likes a little hand trowel for transplanting. I typically use a spade for transplanting and making hills. I dig a spade-size hole where the seedling is going to go, scoop in a shovel of compost and mix it up before transplanting. The spading fork won't work here because the turned soil is too loose to be lifted by the fork. A spading fork doesn't work very well in compost either.

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