rotavator

[niki]

can any body tell me which is the best rotavator to buy plz or any sites to go on,,6hp is all i need thanks

[Veggi_Kid]

how much do you need to use one? you could hire one for about £20 a day?

[NOG]

6 hp is a lot of power. I have a 3.5hp and it pulls my arms off. If you get a 6hp you will need one with powered wheels.

I use my 3.5 to break up fresh ground the make a fine tilth with my mantis. I find that in dry clay the mantis hasn't the guts to break it up.

[jacob marley]

have a look on ebay it will give you a idea....jacob

[chriscross1966]

Something like a Howard Gem (or the equivalent Camon or Honda etc) is "best" if by "best" you mena most powerful.... My father had one and it was quite capable of turnign a carpark into a seedbed...... however..... it had a turning cicle to disgrace a supertanker if you tried to do it under power and if you didn't throttle back sharpish at the end of the row it would plought the path under without really noticing it was there, edging stones or no edging stones.... Very useful if you grow half an acre of spuds, less useful if you're dealing with a smaller plot... The Howard 350 is about the ideal size for a "normal" allotment though I would suggest that there are plenty of smaller things that are very useful too.... I do my main digging by hand and use an Expand-it attatchment for my strimmer to turn seedbeds over into a fine tilth....

chrisc

[NOG]

I would look at Honda...they seem good.

[Norm]

I have the neck end of 700 sq ft and use a rotavator once a year. The hire costs me £40 for the day for a 5hp machine. A new one would probably cost about £600. If I buy one, I will have had my moneys worth in 26 years.

[NOG]

I think it depends on the soil you have. I am on clay and by September it is like tescos carpark.

To dig it over by hand needs a mattock or pickaxe. So I tend to pull up verything then give it a rotovate. Then add a load of manure. Then rotovate that in.

In Feb I give it another going over. You may bring up soil capping but I only have 8inches of top soil then yellow clay subsoil...so in my case rotovating gives me more depth not less.

[BFG]

I thought rotivating divided and spread perennial weeds and created a "pan" at the depth it reaches?

I know for some people, the hard work is all part of it and seen as some kind of initiation test, but have you considered no dig gardening? It's much easier.

It's also kinder to the soil. All the microscopic good guys die when they're churned up and exposed to the light. On the "Farms For The Future" program on recently, it showed vintage clips of a field being ploughed decades ago with loads of birds following it like it was a fishing trawler. Then the same field being ploughed this year. Not a bird in sight. The soil was dead.

In complete contrast, look at the soil in a forest or woodland. Rich, fertile, humus packed, moisture retaining and full of life. I know which I would rather have!

[jacob marley]

.. On the "Farms For The Future" program on recently, it showed vintage clips of a field being ploughed decades ago with loads of birds following it like it was a fishing trawler. Then the same field being ploughed this year. Not a bird in sight. The soil was dead.
.
No the reason is all the birds are on the local tip easier pickings and the ripping out of the hedges and the hedge cutting (were there is any left) just after harvest has driven the birds away....jacob

[NOG]

continual use of the land for the same use cant be good. Pre WW2 you had mixed farms and they grew crops and had some sheep and cows. So after they harvested the wheat the sheep and cows were put on the land for a couple of years to give it a time to recover then they would have put in spuds.

Now you have farms just growing on crop year in year out.