The ‘Gundaroo Tiller’ is an Australian adaptation the traditional European broadfork, and an essential tool for our small market garden. It may look like just a big clunky fork-thing, but it is actually a finely tuned instrument of permaculture soil conditioning goodness. Truly.
Famously, when Allan Yeomans‘ saw his first Gundaroo Tiller, he called it ‘A Keyline plow for gardeners’. For us, it’s an essential part of creating aerated soil structure on compacted pasture without inverting the soil…
Gundaroo Tillers in action during a Milkwood Farm ‘Starting an Organic Market Garden’ course last Spring
The background of the Gundaroo Tiller goes hand in hand with the history of Permaculture in Australia. Around the same time that Bill Mollison & David Holmgren were assembling the seminal text of Permaculture One, Michael Plane of Allsun Farm was designing the Gundaroo Tiller.
Interestingly, Michael and Bill go way back to when they were Ecologists catching possums on mountain tops together, but that’s another story. Anyway, in 1980 Mike Plane settled on the design of the Gundaroo Tiller as a variation on the traditional broadfork, adapted to the heavy clay and rocky soils of Allsun Farm, near Gundaroo NSW.
Mike then began production of the Gundaroo Tiller, making them in his shed, and the device has been developing a cult following ever since with folks wanting to cultivate soil gently, on a human scale.
The basic gist of using a broadfork is both simple and powerful. You dig it in, standing on it and rocking if you need to in order to get extra depth. Once it’s in nearly all the way to the bar, you jump off, and depress the handles to your desired angle.
Then (and this is the big important part), you slide the tiller out of the soil without inverting it, move the tiller 20cm, and start again. The end result is a column of de-compacted soil with it’s profile still upright: water and air can penetrate, but you haven’t upended the soil food web in the process. Yay.
Pull handlebar back to 45 degrees or more, depending on soil conditions, to create aeration in soil without inverting soil profile
It should be said this this is but one part of the larger process of making up a cultivated bed for intensive annual vegetable production. But it’s a very important part both for this year and future year’s production, especially when establishing production on poor and compacted ground.
The benefits of the Gundaroo Tiller are many, but include:
- Less need for tillage (which means more soil structure integrity is retained from year to year)
- Doesn’t create a ’till pan’ of compaction beneath the bed area
- Human scale, no need for pricey motorized equipment
- Removable tines means that if you have super-compacted soil, you can remove some to make the going easier
- Ergonomic-ish
- Build like a proverbial brick structure, so a great tool to have as part of a community ‘tool share’ as it’s incredibly hard to break
- Will outlast any gardener or farmer until several generations down the line (unlike a rototiller)
Since 1980 the design has been modified slightly, and has lost the funky wooden handles in favor of an all-steel frame, for lifetime durability.
After many years of making them, Mike Plane out-sourced the production to a local crew, and the Gundaroo Tillers are now made by our mate Wade Neumann (self confessed potato nerd who supplied us with awesome seed potatoes in quantity last season) down at Mundulla in South Australia.
The main difference between the Gundaroo Tiller and most european broadforks (apart from some fundamental structural differences) is that the tines on the Gundaroo Tiller are straight, not curved. Curved tines are great for highly friable, cultivated soils, but not at all good for heavy compacted clays with lots of rocks in it.
The problem is that if a curved tine broadfork hits a decent sized rock or compaction, the point of rotation is much higher because of the curved tines.
This can cause the broadfork handles to go forwards when it hits hard material, a feature that would quickly become unpractical and hard on the back, which of course results in needing to do more tilling in other ways before broad forking.
In short, the Gundaroo Tiller is made for rougher ground and heavy clay soils, to minimise the neet to do other types of tilling before the broadforking stage of bed making.
Apparently if your soil is fine, deep and friable however, the european broadforks work like a dream. Perhaps we’ll get one in 10 years time, or whenever (if ever) we get to that point of soil nirvana on Milkwood Farm.
Happy American broadforkers with their eminently forkable soils (these ones actually have straight tines, just to be confusing) …
Just a note also that Gundaroo Tillers are a fine idea for backyard gardening as well as market garden scale production, and as said above are a GREAT addition to any community tool library so that their awesomeness can be shared.
Our friend Cam Wilson doing some Gundaroo Tilling with his son Yarrow in suburban Melbourne – photo by Jessie Price
You can get a Gundaroo Tiller in either a 5-tine or a 7-tine model. If you’re not squeezed for storage space, I’d go a 7 tine model as you can always take out the removable tines from the ends if needed for a thin bed or whatever.
>> Gundaroo Tiller page at Allsun Farm’s website
Do also check out Wade Neumann’s home page at Humblehouse.biz for pics of Gundaroo Tiller construction, delicious preserves, gardening and all the other things he and his family get up to in Mundulla, SA.
Our Gundaroo Tiller over at the new market garden extension, where we’re taking pasture to intensive permaculture veggie production in one season…
>> More posts about growing annual vegetables organically and awesomely (and learning as we go)…
Thanks to Wade Neumann for taking time out from lamb marking to word me up on the differences between the Gundaroo Tiller and curved-tine broadforks, and to Mike Plane for devising such a darn useful device…
Ah, sweet hope! We also have rocky, heavy clay soils. We can’t make a dent with a shovel, and can’t afford a tractor. But we can afford one of these beasts!
I can vouch for these tools. When we first started in droughty times the ground was so hard that I had to reduce the tines to 3 short ones to make any headway. I now use the full 7 tines to full depth and fork all our beds at least once a year. Once your soil has some life and becomes friable, it’s amazing at how much ground you can cover with one of these. Every tool shed needs one.
Mine arrived in the post yesterday, and was assembled last night. Great bit of gear! Looking forward to using it in our new market garden beds, then in about 50 years time, handing it on to my grandkids.
Indeed, these are awesome. We have borrowed one from our neighbour to turn the compacted “this used to be a building site” bit at the front of our tiny house into our veggie bed. Easy peasy.
My garden-to-be is basically thick
glossy heavy clay with rocks sprinkled throughout. I will definitely have to put this on my garden shopping list!
I’ve been using a similar broadfork for about 18 years with great success. The greater success was converting an old ranch yard once covered in gravel and buildings into a friable soil. The less success was resurrecting this tool after it had rusted away and failed from metal fatigue. The miracles of welding and good carbon steel.
I use a 4-tined pitch fork (short handle) to do the same thing. I could really benefit from a broadfork! I put away my tiller last summer and haven’t run it since.
“Soil Food Web”…first I’ve seen that used in a long while! There’s a whole world of “little guys” under the surface. I’ve learned how to nurture them and am enjoying prolific garden yield by this (not-so-new) concept.
Awesome, I am going to weld one up tomorrow, being Saturday. This is exactly what i need at this stage in my vege patch, as i havejust made my patch about 3x bigger, and need something bigger to till soil…
My favourite tool for de-compacting the earth before a forest garden goes in.
Anywhere this is available in the U.S. of A.??
Not the Gundaroo Tiller, sorry, but Johnny’s Seeds sell an american version http://www.johnnyseeds.com/search.aspx?searchterm=broadfork&isusersearch=1 and so Does http://www.themarketgardener.com/mg-tools/broadfork-grelinette/
Try : http://www.easydigging.com/
or BCS earth tools – “under garden tools”
nice one ta
I understand Drownings technique there is always an inch of compost on the surface to plant in which works great for transplants and I agree a a home gardener this has worked great for me… wonderful presentation for understanding soil care… thanks
I would like to see a picture of this, or a list of crops and covers that worked well together. I think I have the idea in my head, but I’m not sure if I’m understanding this right or not.
Hello
I can vouch for these tools. When we first started in droughty times the ground was so hard that I had to reduce the tines to 3 short ones to make any headway. I now use the full 7 tines to full depth and fork all our beds at least once a year. Once your soil has some life and becomes friable,
If I use a gundaroo tiller and want to follow keylines, do you put the forks in parallel to or perpendicular to the key lines?
well… keyline plowing + channels are used to distribute water from gullies to ridges, slightly off contour. This is a broadfork,so wouldn’t be used the same way…. though you could broadfork across your land’s contour, to help infiltrate runoff?
I still can’t figure what would be better though, stuck the times in on the contour lines, or perpendicular to them to most improve infiltration
I would definitely go with the tines on-contour, for maximum infiltration across the slope?