Rototiller for food plots

Any of ya'll use rototillers? My father-in-law bought us one, but I haven't gave it a test run yet. Plan to use it in few weeks when we plant.

I use a 6' king cutter and it makes a nice seed bed. 2nd low gear is about as fast as you need to go with it. Any faster and it wont do as good a job but will still cut. Its way faster than a disc when you consider that usually only one pass is needed with it whereas with a disc youll need several

Been using one for years. We mow the plots of the weeds get to tall but usually just spray them. Spread the fertilizer on the ground and pass over it with the tiller and work it in. Spread the seed and cover with the disc and pass the packer over it and done. Make a nice smooth and level plot. I don’t like ugly seed beds and o dang sure don’t like an ugly finished plot. All my buddies laugh at me and tell me it’s not a cash crop it’s just deer plots. But I got them coming around to my way of thinking.

If they bringing in deer then I consider it a cash crop

Yep. Use a 6 footer. Best way to do it.

We use a 7' one prior to planting corn and drilling beans. We did it for a while on fall plots but have kind of given up on it the last couple years just because it is so time consuming. It makes a big difference when using the planter or the drill.

Takes too long.

Really? I’ve used little pull behind 4 wheeler disk where you have to make pass after pass on an acre to get it ok. I imagine this 7’ rototill has to be quicker than what I’ve resorted to the last couple of years.

Pro tip. Avoid vines.

Takes too long and will beat you to death, especially on a rocky field. Guys, our plots are not golf greens, and they don't need to look like it to attract deer. They're expensive and have more crap to tear up. Ya'll think that a field has to be tilled or disked 3-4 inches deep, and that's just simply not the case. I know ya'll get tired of hearing us say it, but throw and mow works and saves you soooo much time and money.

I use one and I really like the end result.

Tillers I've used are painfully slow. The seed bed doesn't have to be pulverized to get good germination. It takes too long for my purposes.

For some small hidey hole spots a tiller would work for me but for most its going to be way too slow.
Are you spraying your plots before going in with the 4 wheeler disk? Spraying and going back 3-4 weeks later to disk is night and day especially when using small light equipment.

I know blumsden and CNC have harped on this, but I really won't ever disc again. Not for food plots anyway. Fields look amazing, and it's so much quicker.

I love to turn dirt as much as anyone. I love the way it looks, smells. But it doesn't help anything. Not at my place at least, with the seed varieties I use.

It makes the most beautiful seed bed, its just not necessary for a food plot. For some reason we want our plots to look like golf courses. To each their own.

And hidden cables.

And wire

If you've got a big 1/4 acre garden, a PTO tiller is perfect for that. But when you bring one out in the woods/rough fields it gets sketchy. I'd rather have a big disc for food plotting for sure.

How do they handle roots, sticks, etc...? What happens when you hit an old stump or rock: shear a pin? bend a tine?

I have a Bush Hog RT88 road construction tiller with a slip clutch. Disc fields early September, hope for rain to germinate the wild ryegrass, seed the plots several weeks later, set the tiller where it cuts an inch and turn the seed, level the dirt and kill the grass at the same time. If you have sandy soil it will need to be packed because tillers really fluff the dirt.

We only plant three fields. It works fine for us.

My uncle has one and we used it for a couple of years to plant smaller food plots or to work logging decks that we wanted to plant. Made a great seedbed and the plots always came up great but it was extremely slow. The end result did not justify the time spent when you compared it to our other plots so we quit using it. If you have a few small plots or the time, should work fine.

I've yet to hurt mine. It's not that tilling is slower than discing, you just dont have a high travel speed. One pass with tiller is all you really need. A 100 hp tractor with a 3 ton disc is nice but most people dont have that to work with. You put a tiller behind a 20 hp tractor and your in business.

Worked a few plots today with the tiller. All one pass.

Oohjhh thats purty.

Marsh I see dead grass in those plots (which look great btw). Did you spray before tilling?

That's the main thing I wanted to interject here for the OP. If you set one down in green grass more than about 4" tall you'll wrap the tiller up in it and it'll take an act of congress to get it out. If it's LONG grass you'll probably decide to throw the tiller away.

They were sprayed in July. Been real dry so there wasn’t much tall grass. My buddy just took the bushhog and clipped them down ahead of me. Worked great. But I have been known to put that tiller where it shouldn’t be and yes it’s a job to cut all that grass out. And don’t leave the grass and let it dry because it turns like cable.

What Blumsden said...

We still disc ours to break it up then hit with roto tiller. It seems like you are crawling but it takes about 45-60 minutes to prepare a plot of 1 acre with the tiller, but they sure produce a good seed bed.
https://i.imgur.com/CWiKe12.jpg

Yes they do.

That plot looks like a good producer.

Here's another one.

Question. Since Im relatively new to it.

Did you just mow down the grass and disc and till..or did you spray to kill first?

That's muzzies picture but I've done it both ways. Always cut the grass down or burn down.

I destroyed my disc last summer prepping my bean/corn plot and used that as an excuse to go buy a new 7' tiller.I love it.I do about 6 acres of fall plots and about the same summer plots and had no problem with the speed.

I

I mowed them first then sprayed them and waited three weeks. We disk them and then hit them with roto tiller. This method has always given us a great seed bed and we don’t have to compete with weeds either.