Source for Mantis Tiller?

Didn't think to try "pulling back", but it makes sense, I'll try that and report back.

 

Hi Kristen, how are you getting on with the Mantis now?

 

I like it.

For the first season ever, that I can remember, all beds are tilled. I planted out some sweet peas yesterday, and normally I get wrist ache trying to make holes in our hard clay [because it hasn't normally been tilled for a while before planting], but the whole vegetable patch and cut flower bed was tilled only a few weeks ago, so it was a breeze to plant.

We've also been able to rotavate between some young [i.e. still small] shrubs, and the front of the rose bed, and some areas that we aren't ready to plant as yet and just want to keep "clean".

Its also a good to own a device like this - when the weather is right, or if I just have a small area I want to do, I can get on it straight away. When renting [larger] rotavators in the past its often been the case that the weather wasn't right when I hired ...

The less good points are:

It surprisingly hard to start, from cold, for a 4-stroke, but trifflingly easy when warm (I expect the 2-stroke is harder to start when warm).

Can't set the handles to "offset", so you either walk on your work, or you work backwards (which works well)

It doesn't leave a "tidy" result, like a self-propelled rotavator, so there tend to be piles of crumbled soil, and furrows, which then have to be evened out. Its not very clever, on that basis, for just running along the edge of the bed, or between rows of plants.

But given that pretty much all the soil we need to till this year has been rotavated I reckon it will remain friable enough to just how the rest of the year.

So the negatives are pretty small-beer really

 

Kirsten

"Can't set the handles to "offset", so you either walk on your work, or you work backwards (which works well)"

You have to offset your arms.

 

"You have to offset your arms"

OK

But that's easier said than done because the machine jumps around quite a bit on our hard clay soil, so if I was working between plants I would want to be right behind it to make sure I could stop it rotavating a plant!

But as I said the negatives are not significant compared to the pluses