Tiller recommendations?

P. This may not be the answer that you're looking for, but so be it. When you use a tiller you are breaking up the soil very efficiently and making things nice and soft for the roots to move around. But it also makes it easy for the soil to get saturated leaving less stability for the plant, also to get too compacted when stood upon, etc. Lastly it's un-natural in so far as when nature creates soil in the earth is does it very efficiently with worms, natural elements, composting etc.
If you can stand a little shoveling try once more using a double dig system. It will get easier every year. Dig a trench with a short square shovel with a round handle across the width of your garden plot about 1' in width. Stand on a board so as not to compact the soil your standing on. Use that first trench worth of dirt in a compost pile or elsewhere. Then use a garden pitchfork to break up the soil in the bottom of the trench you just dug. Just dig it in and move it back and forth a little to break it up.
Move back a foot now and repeat, but this time shovel the dirt in the trench you just dug, and then use the pitchfork to break up the bottom again. Repeat until you get to the end. It's not as bad as it sounds as you are not lifting shovels full of dirt and turning them. This will give you a solid structure to plant in as well as giving your plants twice as much root depth ability then they would have otherwise.Of course now that I type all this I find that there's a ton of it on the net. Oh well. Here's one link and if you look it up you'll find a ton. I can tell you this, they all say it's hard, but I dug up the garden last year by hand and double dug it this year and double digging is easier! http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/gl_soil_wat...372205,00.html

Porkchops,

Exactly how large of a garden are you wanting? Because you may not have to "dig" at all.

What I did was rent a badas. tiller once and tilled, cleaned and worked my garden once. Then every year it just needs a little, easy tlc to keep it loose. Just a thought.

Also you can grow in large pots and get awesome results!

I know that you don't want anything gas or electric, but I just wanted to tell you what I purchased. After much searching, I decided to purchase one of those mantice tiller.UNTIL I visited Lowes and met a vendor that was there representing Troy Built. I told her of my plans and she said she had never been so impressed with the tiller attachment for their weed wackers.l
I told her that I had looked at those, but I told her that I had a small Troy Built 2 cycle weedeater And I did not think it was strong enough with the clay we had here in TX. I told her it was about a year old and did not need replacing.
She told me to go home and get it. Sorry, I'll speed up. Anyway, she replaced it and sent me home with a 4 cylinder 29cc weedeater with the tiller attachment.
I turned over one bed last night and can't tell you how impressed I was with how easy and strong it was.
There are all sorts of attachments. The tiller had a 2 year bring back guarantee.
pan

If you're only going to have a garden thats 4ft.X 10-15ft. a tiller would be a waste of time and money, and I think you would have a hard time trying to use it in such a small area. A garden weasel is not the same as a tiller, it doesn't go deep enough. It's just for loosening the top soil enough for water to sink in easier and to be able to pull weeds easier. I've never heard of what panini is talking about but it might be worth looking into. Other then that I'd just use a shovel. If it's to much for your back to handle consider hiring a kid to do the job, I'm sure you could find one that would be happy to do the job for $10.00-$20.00.