Just realized the neighbor's $30 garden hoe beats my $180 tiller for most beds

My neighbor in Phoenix laughed at me breaking my back on compacted clay, then handed me his beat-up hoe and said 'working the soil slow beats forcing it fast,' so after 3 weekends of tilling I finally got his point, but am I the only one who thinks big tools are oversold for small yards?

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1 Comment

young.spencer1mo ago

Funny thing is, that hoe's probably got another 20 years in it while your tiller will need belts and spark plugs by next spring. Small yards are really about how much you can actually store and maintain, not just what gets the job done fastest. A tiller sits in the shed 11 months a year and takes up space you could use for something else. Plus, when you hand-dig a bed, you catch the grubs and rocks that a tiller just spins right past. Maybe the real trick is having a few cheap hand tools and saving the machine money for a soil test and some compost.