Get matched with top rototilling pros in Peck, MI

Yes, rototilling has many benefits. Rototilling is a great way to aerate the soil in your garden, introduce fertilizer, and remove weeds from your soil to prep it for planting, so it is very often a worthwhile expense. You can get by without rototilling if you’re willing to use manual tools, but the work will take much longer and is very labor-intensive. If you’re looking to prepare your garden for planting or your soil for new grass growth, rototilling is relatively inexpensive and almost always worth the money.

Yes, you can rent a rototiller for around $60 per day and do the work yourself, but it’s not recommended. Tilling is more of an art than a science, as tilling too deep can be detrimental to your soil structure and the organic matter that is beneficial to plants and shrubs, and tilling too shallow won’t properly introduce fertilizer or break up the soil for rooting plants. Additionally, tillers are powerful machines with sharp blades to cut through small roots and soil, so they are inherently dangerous to use. It’s usually worth it to hire a professional rototiller.

A perc test takes an average of around two hours, but it can range from one hour up to around six hours. Perc tests that require wider or deeper holes and those that require multiple holes dug throughout your property will take longer because there’s more excavation involved. The actual filling of the hole and monitoring to gauge the rate of percolation should take under an hour per hole.

For minor unevenness, you don't necessarily need to remove grass before leveling. You can apply a topdressing mixture to fill in low areas and even out the surface. However, for more significant unevenness or deep depressions, it might be necessary to temporarily remove the grass to ensure proper leveling and soil compaction. After filling and leveling, you can replace the grass or consider reseeding the area.