Earthquake MC440 Cultivator Review: Capable of Much More Than You’d Expect

I’ve written about the cultivator we bought in multiple blog posts so far:

• Which Cultivator Is Right for Digging Garden Beds?
• Weekly Garden Update #2 – Buying Our Tiller

As a refresher, we bought the Earthquake MC440 cultivator. It has a 40cc 4-cycle engine and has tines that adjust the working width between 6 and 10 inches. We’ve had it for over a month now and have probably put between 15 and 20 hours on it, so I feel it’s a good time to review it.

Pros

Let’s get this out of the way now: There are a lot more pros than cons to this cultivator, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Power

Despite only being a 40cc engine, this cultivator has plenty of power. If you don’t have a good grip on it and are prepared to hold it back, it will be ripped out of your hands if you use full throttle. Typically, half-throttle is about all you need for most of the cultivating work. It’s powerful enough to break ground in lawns that have never been dug before, allowing it to take on jobs generally reserved for larger tillers.

Mobility

Before we bought our cultivator, I didn’t know that some of the smaller ones don’t have permanently attached wheels. Instead, they’re only used when moving it to and from the garden beds. Ours has a set of wheels that adjust to determine the depth of the tilling tines. When you aren’t actively cultivating, you can raise the wheels back up for transportation. The tiller is also nimble enough to be maneuvered in tight spaces and stored in the corner of your garage.

Weight

This is connected to the mobility section, but the weight of this cultivator makes it a breeze to use. At only 32 or 33 pounds, most people can lift it if necessary. This makes it easy to lift out of the garden bed or into the back of a vehicle for transportation.

Cost

This was one of the biggest reasons we bought this cultivator. While many larger machines were approaching $500, we spent less than $300 for ours. That amount is higher than some of the smaller cultivators we considered, but this one provided us with the perfect balance of size and power at a cost we were comfortable with.

Durability

I know that we have only had our cultivator for around a month, but we have used it a lot. We also haven’t gone easy on it. We’re asking it to cut through ground that has never been anything but grass and turn over the soil below the grass up to a depth of 4 or 5 inches. We’ve also run it for hours on end, and it has yet to give us an issue. It fires up within a few pulls each time (as long as I remember to turn it on), hasn’t stalled, and the tines remain undamaged.

Cons

Weight

The same thing that allows this cultivator to be mobile and easy to maneuver is a con. The heavier a cultivator or tiller is, the easier it is to get the tines deeper into the soil. That leads to less work for the person running the machine. I’ve thought a bit about how to add some weight, possibly by attaching something to the frame, but I haven’t pursued it.

Mud & Weeds Getting Twisted Around the Tines

This may not be a con with this specific machine or just cultivators in general, but I’ve found that the tines don’t do a great job of preventing mud from getting caked on them. This can reduce the effectiveness of the tines when cultivating. It’s not a huge deal, as it generally only happens when the ground is pretty damp, but it is an inconvenience. Similarly, grass can become twisted around the metal bar that the tines go on. This doesn’t impact the cultivator’s ability to perform, but we typically remove the tines and pull out the grass before putting it away each time we use it. Thankfully, this is an easy process with only one cotter pin on each side holding the tines on. It only takes a few minutes to remove the grass before you’re back in business.

Noise

If you read our post on picking out a cultivator, you’ll remember that we placed a lot of weight on how loud a cultivator would be when considering the power supply. It’s a reason we went with a 4-cycle engine over a 2-cycle. I still think it was a wise decision, because a 2-cycle engine would have been louder, but this cultivator is anything but silent. If the RPMs are kept low, it’s not loud at all; however, if you need extra RPMs to get through tough ground or thick grass, it quickly becomes noisy. I wouldn’t want to use it without some form of ear protection. That being said, any cultivator that uses an internal combustion engine is going to be loud, and it’s still much quieter than a leaf blower, so there’s that.

Would I Recommend the Earthquake MC440?

I would absolutely recommend this cultivator for anyone looking for a lightweight, cost-effective option. While it’s designed to turn over soil and work in existing garden beds, it can punch far above its weight class and does a great job in untouched ground. It has its limitations, but if you are uncomfortable with spending $500 on a large tiller and only plan to use the machine occasionally, this is a perfect cultivator.