Broadfork (Tilling, the simple way)

I have been working to transition to no till gardening. It is making a huge difference in terms of how early I can start gardening (since I don't have to worry about damaging wet soil with the rototiller), and the pleasantness and workload of spring. No more infernal rototiller noise, bad smell, gasoline purchasing, worrying about whether I can start to rototiller or not, flooding the carburator and all the fun stuff that goes along with small engines. 

When transitioning to no-till gardening, if you have a heavier, clay-based soil like mine, you will still want to "fluff" the soil in the spring (this should diminish with time as more organic matter gets added over the years). The perfect tool to do so is the broadfork. Although the broadfork is a manual tool, I find it much less of a workout to use than my rototiller. Basically, you insert insert the tip of the tines into the soil, step on the broadfork to drive them completely in, and use the two handles and your body weight to fluff the soil upwards. You don't turn the soil over - just aerate it a bit. If you do this right, you should see that the soil is sitting a couple inches higher after you do this. You repeat this down your row. Personally I really like moving the tines a few inches to the left or right after each scoop, I find that does a better job at lifting and aerating the soil. Here is a video of someone using a broadfork. 

Now that I have a broadfork, I will only use my rototiller to create a new garden bed from scratch, when I need to break the sod and grass. For maintenance, I will rely on my broadfork.

My broadfork, it comes from Growers. Choose one that is the right width compared to your garden rows.

in the process of aerating one of the rows in my kitchen garden