Tiller / rotavaor?

[Pennies]

I have a 90m sq allotment with quite clayey soil. I'm finding digging it over pretty hard graft and it's really hard to break the soil up and it's very clumpy. I was wondering if it was worth getting a rotavator or a tiller?

Do you use one? Does it break up the clumps well and produce fine enough soil?

My DH says if the clay is sticking to your spade, then you shouldn't use a rotavator as it'll lead to 'panning' which is a hard scoop under the soil which sets like rock and roots can't get through.

If the soil isn't that clayey, then a rotavator will solve all your problems.

I have used a rotavator a lot in the past (well, I still use one, but these days its a bit bigger & attached to a tractor ).

IMO they are really good, so long as they fit in with your style of growing. You need to have decent sized patches of land free at the same time in order to rotavate effectively - so you need for example to group all your overwintering crops together, therefore leaving a nice big patch to rotavate ready for spring sowings.

What works really well I find is to sow to green manure as your crops come out (rye & vetch overwinter works well for me), then rotavate that in come the spring, leave a couple of weeks & rotavate again to get a good tilth.

I have never used the small Mantis style tillers, but looking at them, I would imagine that they would be less successful dealing with heavy clay soil on an allotment scale.

I don't suppose your allotment site (or a friendly neighbour) has a rotavator that you could have a play with? They're quite pricey if you buy a decent one (ours cost about £800 equivalent when we bought it maybe 10 or 12 yrs ago in Spain), and it might be that it would be more cost effective to hire one once or twice a year.