My latest Ryobi tool--a cultivator

[cgallery]

Now that the kids are a little older I got rid of the swing set in the back yard. LOML always wanted a larger garden so I decided I'd turn the area the swing set was in into a vegetable garden for her.

I turned the soil over by shovel on Saturday (didn't take long) and removed rocks. On Sunday I chased a Ryobi electric (12-amps) cultivator down (RY46501, $189 at the BORG) and this morning spent about 30 minutes breaking the big chunks into nice black dirt.

You wouldn't think an electric cultivator would be up to the task. But the reviews of this model and the Troy Built (only 6.5 amps on the Troy, though) said they were great. The ground was pretty compacted, and I left the grass in there figuring whatever device I purchased would knock the dirt off (saving as much dirt as possible) before I removed the turf. The Ryobi had absolutely no problem. It would grab big pieces of turf and shred them up quite easily.

Now I just need a few bags of soil and some compost and I'll go through it again. I'm going to increase the size of the garden a little, too, seeing as I directly benefit from the output.

She is pretty excited about the garden, and I don't blame her. She has had to put up with a crappy little strip next to a fence for far too long.

[DUD]

I bought the Ryobi Cultivator for My Ryobi 4 cycle trimmer and it works great for the

flower beds and such. I don't want a garden, Nephew gives Me anything I want out of

His. Glad to know this is a good buy. Bill

[crokett]

Dud,

The Ryobi attachment for my two cycle trimmer sucked. It did squat in NC clay unless I broke up the ground first. The whole reason I wanted the cultivator was so I didn't HAVE to break up the ground by hand.

[DUD]

David

I don't know if it has changed or not since You bought Yours, but Mine works great

here. Our soil types must be different. Bill

[Bill Stock]

Originally Posted by crokett

Dud,

The Ryobi attachment for my two cycle trimmer sucked. It did squat in NC clay unless I broke up the ground first. The whole reason I wanted the cultivator was so I didn't HAVE to break up the ground by hand.

Sounds like our soil. I rented one of those Mantis tillers when we deepened the pond and used the 'bricks' to raise a low spot in the lawn. I only wanted to break up the surface dirt and not dig into the lawn below. The Mantis was barely up to the job after a lot of bouncing around. There is no way it would have touched our clay that we had to dig out with a pick.

[cgallery]

Originally Posted by Bill Stock

Sounds like our soil. I rented one of those Mantis tillers when we deepened the pond and used the 'bricks' to raise a low spot in the lawn. I only wanted to break up the surface dirt and not dig into the lawn below. The Mantis was barely up to the job after a lot of bouncing around. There is no way it would have touched our clay that we had to dig out with a pick.

I only came across a little bit of clay. No large pockets of it or anything. The soil was surprisingly good. The house is older (50's), but they clearly brought in top soil after it was built because there was a good 5-6" of black soil in top of the leftover bricks from my foundation.

I'm actually glad I found the bricks, as I've set them aside in the event I ever need to make a small repair.

[jking]

Originally Posted by crokett

Dud,

The Ryobi attachment for my two cycle trimmer sucked. It did squat in NC clay unless I broke up the ground first. The whole reason I wanted the cultivator was so I didn't HAVE to break up the ground by hand.

I bought the tiller attachment for my trimmer also. The biggest problem was the unit simply doesn't have enough weight. You do have to break the ground up first, then run the tiller through. I pretty much had to drag it backwards in order to get it to work down deep enough.

The electric unit may work better since most of the weight is over the tines.

[cgallery]

Originally Posted by jking

The electric unit may work better since most of the weight is over the tines.

Yeah, it has some decent weight in front, and it has a compartment where you can add sand to gain additional weight. I didn't do this, as I didn't have any problem getting it to bury itself.

[Pappy]

I have the same one as the OP. If you fill the 'hopper' with sand the extra weight makes it works even better.

[jking]

Originally Posted by cgallery

Yeah, it has some decent weight in front, and it has a compartment where you can add sand to gain additional weight. I didn't do this, as I didn't have any problem getting it to bury itself.

Originally Posted by Pappy

I have the same one as the OP. If you fill the 'hopper' with sand the extra weight makes it works even better.

That is a very interesting idea.

The low maintenance of an electric motor is nice for something like this that typically gets used infrequently. I think I could learn to live with the inconvenience of dragging a cord around.