Garden Tiller Buyer's Guide

If you're undertaking a large gardening project, help yourself out by using the best equipment possible.

Long gone are the days of shovels, spades and hoes.

Garden tillers can be a gardener's best friend because they are such time-saving tools.

Instead of getting down on your hands and knees, let powerful garden tillers do the work for you.

Garden Tillers come in three types:

Front-Tine Tillers
Front-tine tillers work more like their smaller counterparts, cultivators. They're great for tilling established beds and stirring up slightly loose soil.

Front-tine tillers are like cultivators on steroids. They essentially do the same thing and operate in the same way, although they are bigger and more powerful, allowing you to tackle larger jobs more quickly. One nice feature to look for is a tiller with adjustable tine width, which can optimize the machine's performance in any situation.



Mid-Tine Tillers
Mid-tine tillers are like the hybrid cousin of a garden tiller and a cultivator. With a front guide wheel and centered tines, mid-tine tillers have superior maneuverability than cultivators or front tine tillers.

Similarly, mid-tine tillers have adjustable depth bars, which allow for more control regarding tilling depth. Another nice feature of mid-tine tillers is the adjustable handlebars, so you can always till at a comfortable height



Rear-Tine Tillers
For breaking up the hardest, most compact soils, get a rear-tine tiller. These are equipped with large, rugged tires for stability to work through soils of all conditions.

What separates rear tine tillers from the rest of the pack is the different tine rotation directions you can use. Unlike cultivators and front- and mid-tine tillers, rear-tine tillers are either forward (standard) rotating, counter-rotating, or dual (both) rotating. This is allows them to break through hard, clay soils.