Busy day.  Now that the rototiller is working and most of the garden is tilled it was time to plant!  Tomatoes first and then eggplants.  About 35 tomato starts are in the ground.  This year we took a different approach.  Previously  we tied two 52″ cattle panels together with twine at the top then leaned them together.  This gave us frames that were about 4 feet 6 inches tall.

This year we picked up 7 foot T posts from the Grange Co Op and mounted a single panel between two of the posts.  This gives us the full 5 foot panel to grow on and by putting it 8 to 12 inches off the ground gives us much more room at the top to tie the tomatoes to.

Looking forward to another great year

The rototiller I have is many years old.  I’m not sure how old but it was manufactured in Europe (BCS) and apparently the company has updated all their designs from this model.  It’s a great rototiller when it starts but when it doesn’t, well it’s a pain. I finally figured out the exact starting order and dealt with the reason it would be hard to start.

First, the pull start didn’t always retract.  This makes it really hard to start when you can only get a half pull.  It also means you are pulling really hard and doing damage to the cord.   I pulled a few  times to many and another strand of metal broke loose.  One pull after that, the whole cable broke.

Stopping by the small engine repair shop for a few parts and the counter worker hadn’t ever heard of metal wires for starter cables.  After several assurances that even though it was a hard start the nylon rope would work just fine I took it home and spent a few hours pulling the starter assembly apart, cleaning it and putting it back together.

The first pull resulted in the rope slipping through the handle and back into the starter housing.  20 minutes of break down and put back together later I pulled again.  The first pull broke the rope. I tried a number of items including an impact wrench with a belt for a car.  After that attempt I noticed the notch on the wheel and it reminded me that they used to have a notch so you could put a rope with a knot into the notch, wrap it a few times and then give it a yank.  It worked perfectly.

That left one problem which was that even on a great pull it wouldn’t turn over.  I noticed that the deadman switch had a bit of slack.  Tightening that up made it start on the first time almost every time.  Now it’s a fun rototiller to use.