I am growing winter wheat this year. Like only tilling by hand. I feel like im going nowhere with my current strategy and looking online for tips doesnt help much. Im only finding stuff about tilling already worked soil by hand.
I need strategies on tilling thick grass by hand. If its literally just I need to embrace the suck I can embrace the suck. But im hoping someone here knows something or a place I can look.
I got about 3 days till I need to plant. I will continue tilling throughout the winter so I can have a large plot ready to grow alot come spring.
My current strategy is just beating the earth with a shovel and hoping I can make it.
An again. If I have to embrace the suck, keep doing it this way for fresh ground. Then I can absolutely do that. I just need to know if there is a better way by hand.
Edit: purposely didnt want to use a tiller. An had more time set aside to pull this off. But was pretty sick. Def should have thrown out a few tarps to kill the grass. Got no reason for not doing so other than just not really thinking it out.
Reason why im not using a tiller is a little weird. But im doin it this way purposely for the challenge and how terrible it will be. Cause if I can do this. If I can keep up with this then I can feel confident in my ability to consistently push myself and see things through. Too many times ive given up on something.
Doesn't really make sense. But. Its my reason, next year def gonna use a tiller
by Rileylego5555
39 Comments
There is no efficient way tot ill by hand. There are ways to till by hand and then there are ways to efficiently till. Every single advancement in tilling has been made to advance hand tilling.
Were I to be doing this by hand, I’d use this:
[https://thetoolmerchants.com/store/magna-grecia-hoe/](https://thetoolmerchants.com/store/magna-grecia-hoe/)
Your time is better spent renting a rototiller for a day or two. It’ll still be sweaty and back-breaking but you’ll actually be able to finish.
Ok, so….why are you doing this by hand?
Theres a reason youre not finding much, because its a fool’s errand.
Get a BCS, or rent a hand-tiller. Theres no way you’ll do this in 3 days unless youre a god-tier athlete or have help.
For that amount of land, you need at least a team of oxen pulling a plough. Why are you doing this by hand. You need equipment or an army of laborers.
It is not physically possible for you to till this in three days.
Those round bales tell me you have access to equipment, so why aren’t you using equipment?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hm-f-DaMle8&ra=m
Spray it with a stiff dose of glyphosate and seed it three days later.
For next year, look for a Gravely walkbehind with a rotary plow. Or a BCS with a Berta rotary plow.
How much land are we talking about?
Bite the bullet and rent a tiller to get it over with this season. That buys you time to come up with a better plan next year
If you need to plant in three days hire someone with a tractor to till it or rent a tiller.
Steve Salomon has strategies in his book on how to open a field like this for cultivation. The book is gardening when it counts.
I used his technique to open a field up over a winter. Even double digging the field I still ran a tiller over it.
Getting a field of this size ready to plant wheat is a tall order. Like someone else said it’s why tillage equipment evolved with grain agriculture.
Rent a tiller or tractor.
Digging hoe, with a long handle and a wide blade. Makes a shove feel useless.
Go on Facebook for your local community and ask if there’s someone who can till up your garden.
There is no effecient way to till that by hand. Why are you trying to do this? Not even the amish do this. Go rent a rototiller, or get a neighbor with a tractor to do it. This is not a good way to spend time.
Tarps and occultation. It’s obviously too late for that in your context but it’s the tried and true no till strategy.
Once you have established beds running through with wheel hoe is an effort but not the chore you’re looking at now
https://reddit.com/link/pey2f3a/video/gg24mak8wiuh1/player
There is a reason humans looked at horses, donkeys, and oxen ans thought “hey, that would be way better”. There’s no way you’re tilling that much by hand.
My foolproof method for hand tilling was to try it for five minutes then buy a tractor. Hand-tilling is intrinsically inefficient, which is why ancient cultures enslaved so many people to work in agriculture and why modern cultures invented and exclusively utilize mechanical tilling.
That said, a lot of smaller agrarian cultures would set fire to an area to clear cut it, then work the soil open in narrow rows to plant seed, typically using a hoe or similar tool. If you want to do a small area by scattering seeds, a spading fork or broad fork is a good start, then you can break up clumps with a mattock or hoe, then take out. Assuming you kill all current vegetation first.
In all seriousness, you really need to sit down and some soul-searching to figure out why 1) you’re so intent on growing the world’s most easily acquired commodity and 2) why you’re insisting on doing it in the most difficult way possible. Of all the food you can grow yourself, grains are probably the worst choice simply because it is substantially easier and cheaper to buy them. And if you’re going to grow your own, you may as well purchase some sort of mechanical tiller, even if it’s just an older used one. What you’re trying to do is, quite frankly, senseless.
So is there a reason you’re ignoring 12,000 years of agricultural advancement?
I tried winter wheat as a cover crop once.
Once.
Ended up getting an asphalt/weed burner I attached to my grill propane tank and burned it all to shit in the Spring. Ever since, I’ve only grown “winter kill” cover crops.
Why? Rent a tiller for $50 and be done with it.
Hand turning soil to plant wheat?
Is this one of those bake your bread from the wheat you grow things?
If there was an effective way to till by hand we wouldn’t have invented better ways. Your next step up is to till with an animal but I’d personally skip that and get a tractor.
Use something powered by an engine that runs on petrochemicals.
If that’s not a possibility, use a beast of burden to pull a plow for you, that’s what we’ve been doing for 8000 years now.
is there any reason you want to do this by hand? It’s not necessarily good for your health you know. If you don’t want to rent a tractor, can you consider renting or buying a cow for that task?
Get a bent pitchfork which you can drag along the soil to till it (with some bricks tied on top to weigh it down so you don’t need to push down) or even a regular one will save you the back breaking work
If you are inflexible on using mechanized equipment then this will do the job with a huge amount of labor. I use this in my residential gardens and it will break up dense clay soil, but it’s a workout.
https://meadowcreature.com/products/tall-broadfork-14
It’s a generational tool. You could run this over with a track hoe and probably not bend it. Mine is around 15 years old and it still looks like new, and it stays out in the weather.
Not really feasible to do that much by hand, like others have said, you should rent a tiller for now. If you’re doing this because you’re committed to not using gas, you can look into electric options in the future, or go old school and figure out how to use oxen or something. If you aren’t opposed to gas in the future, just get one of Honda walk behind tillers when you can. Renting really is the way to go though.
To efficiently till by hand, you want to mow low and then kill the grass first. Discing or occultation with silage tarps for several weeks works, but at this point its a bit late for that. Do you have a neighbor with a tractor you could hire to till it for you?
Maybe you can grow more hands?
A broadfork would help a lot because you use your body weight to break up the ground. Still very labor intensive but less so than a shovel and more productive. There are tutorials on youtube how to use one. Good luck OP
Lol. Op’s swamped with ‘Just don’t do this!’ comments. I wonder if they’ll heed the advice…
I’ve heard of people using daikon radish as a cover crop and letting the large taproots break up the soil. Obviously not an immediate solution if you need the wheat this season
Focus your time on things that are more manageable ,hats off to you for wanting to do it by hand . You didn’t bale that hay by hand ,no shame in having it tilled or plowed .
Dumber than a 700 AD peasant
I was gonna say, ‘get into the 21st Century’, but you aren’t even in the 1st Century bro.
Have you thought about no till? Intensive cell grazing to prepare for berms maybe?
Man, I’m not trying to get you feeling down here, but it might be too late. There’s a reason why humans adopted horses and oxen to pull ploughs: tilling by hand is only negligibly more efficient than hunting/gathering.
I’m not sure you really need to till for winter wheat if you are looking for forage. You might try direct sewing seed and covering with a light cover of broken/shredded hay to get it started. You have to baby it a bit til it gets going but it’s a lot easier on you. Look up no till farming…it’s a thing…especially for cover crops.
Dude rent a horse and plow for a few days
It’s getting late in the season so you need to move fast. Spray glyphosate in the field and burn it after 2 weeks. Then spread wheat seeds. Wheat is one of the few crops you can get good production from without any tillage. You just need seed-soil contact. The wheat does not need to be under soil to germinate or produce. Just spread some extra seed because it will be visible to birds. The birds will feast on it until germination starts.
There is no time to till by hand this year. If you are unsatisfied with the results, you can till next year.