Before Picture

I agree, a garden tiller can be fragile, but if a Howard rotavator is bought and sized properly for the tractor, you will not break it, and it "will" go full depth without problems. In fact, a Howard and a spring tooth drag (harrow) is all the garden tool anyone will need to own to break up any kind of sod and have a smooth seed bed. (of course with a tractor out front)

I do this all the time on a comercial basis, so i'm speaking from experience. In fact, this week i just finished two 20 acre fields for a customer. One had been in orchard for over 60 years, and had never been worked up with a tractor before and was "full" of rocks!! The other was an over grown 30 year old pasture with over 10' tall thorney bushes in it.

The secret is to learn how to set the rotavator up to get the job you want.

Here's the "before" picture

Robert

Here's why you see so many varied rateings for tillers.

All tillers are NOT the same, some only have 4 tines per flange, others have 6. Then there's the fact that field tillers have bigger thicker tines, and many cheapo tillers don't go 8 to 9 inches deep like Howard field tillers do. Then there's the tine speed. Cheapo tillers have one speed, field tillers have 4 or more speeds. You can open the gearbox right in the field (as shown in the pict.) without tools, and change the gears around that are stored in there, so you can match the tine speed to the tilllage you want. There's a lip on the bottom of the gear box to hold the oil in so you don't loose any of it when opening the box.

Now, put that all together, 6 tines per flange, going 8+ inches deep and turn the tine speed up, and you need some "horses"!!!

Howard Rotavators (field tillers) have all the "good stuff" and need decent hp because of it. Of course Howard also does make some smaller tillers for low hp tractors for garden use too.

A 7 foot field tiller needs 60 PTO hp to run it in "easy to moderate" conditions, but 70 is a lot better and to get the most out of it in all conditions 80 is what i'd want. I run my 80" HR30 with 60 PTO hp, and there are times that i wish i had more.

I match my tools to my tractors so i'm useing no more that 80% of the max PTO hp for continous use..

BTW, many of the Howards will "offset" so you are covering the tire tracks on that side as you go around. That way you can put a narrower tiller on a wider tractor.

Robert

Rotary cut, rotavated twice, and spring tooth harrowed.