A rotary tiller, commonly known as a rototiller, is a motorized cultivator with tines or blades that rotate through the soil, pulverizing it and breaking up clumps into a finer texture. How to use your rotary tiller to help prepare your soil?

If you are starting with sod, you may need to hire someone to plow up the sod before you rototill it. If you do this, consider simply hiring the farmer to rototill the plot for you. It will be a lot easier, and you can rototill next year once you have an established plot. Or, double dig.

Double digging is an effective method of improving soil in the garden with simply a spade and a lot of hard work. To double-dig, you begin by spreading compost over the soil. Then, dig a trench 10 inches deep and the width of your moto mower spade, depositing the shovel full of soil onto the ground next to the ditch. Dig a second ditch alongside the first, moving the shovel full of soil into the first ditch. Continue in this manner until the entire area has been hand-dug.

There is another method, no-till. No-till is a newer method of tillage that doesn't disturb the soil like conventional methods. Its advantages include decreased erosion, lower need for equipment and obviously, no cultivation of the soil. However, no-till farmers must still purchase a no-till drill for planting crops, and no-till methods can involve a lot of trial and error.

There are two types of no-till, conventional and organic. In conventional no-till, herbicides are used to kill weeds and any crop residue before planting. For organic no-till, a cover crop is used to smother weeds, then is mowed or rolled down, and crops are planted directly into the soil between the remains of the cover crop.

If you're a homesteader seeking to plant a veggie garden to feed your family, you might not need a power sweeper or heavier tillage methods of any sort. Instead, hand tilling your soil via double digging or other methods might serve you best.