This week’s garden update will be brief, as we haven’t started any more seeds and are in a holding pattern as we wait for the ground to dry out. All of the snow has melted and has been followed by some rain, so our soil is quite saturated.
In last week’s update, I mentioned that we may be starting eggplant seeds this week, but after consulting the seeding starting spreadsheet, we realized that this weekend was a bit too early. We’ll actually be starting them this week, likely Thursday. Instead, the big thing that happened this week was that we bought our rototiller.
Which Tiller Did We Buy?
Buying a tiller or cultivator is a big decision; much bigger than I thought it would be. In the future, I’ll likely write a standalone article that discusses what went into the decision we made, but for now, we bought this tiller:
It is an Earthquake 40 cc 4-cycle tiller (technically, it’s a mini cultivator) that can till up to a 10-inch wide path at one time. Two of the tines can be removed to till a narrower path, and it has a working depth of 8 inches. We bought ours from Amazon, although it is also available at Tractor Supply, Lowe’s, and Ace Hardware. We wanted to buy locally, but the Tractor Supply in our town didn’t have it in stock, Ace was far more expensive than Amazon, and the closest Lowe’s to us is about 30 minutes away. Meanwhile, Amazon was able to deliver it the next day.
It arrived on Thursday afternoon, and it only took about half an hour to put together. Afterward, I had to give it a go and see how it worked. The engine fired right away, and we did a quick trial run in the mulch bed by our back porch and in our yard. It worked extremely well in the mulch bed, which was expected, and did pretty well in the yard, which has never been tilled. We weren’t expecting it to have much success in the yard since the ground was very wet and we hadn’t set the depth on the tiller yet. We’re very excited to have a tiller and can’t wait to get our garden laid out. The plan is to till the garden later this month, but if it dries out before then, we’ll likely start sooner.
What’s Next?
As mentioned in the intro, we were originally planning to start our eggplant seeds this weekend but realized it was too early. Instead, that will happen this week. Those will be the only other seeds we’ll be starting in March. Everything else will be started in April or May. Happy gardening!
One Rabbit Riot 