For breaking up old turf or rough ground to start again: a new vegetable plot, a paddock being reseeded, ground for a new lawn or wildflower area. A tractor rotavator turns compacted grass into loose, workable soil far faster than a pedestrian machine.
A tractor rotavator has a horizontal shaft fitted with L-shaped blades that spin through the top layer of soil, usually up to around 15 to 20 cm deep. It chops turf and roots and mixes them into the soil, leaving a loose, broken finish.
Old grassland often needs two or more passes: one to break the turf and another, after a week or two, to work it down finer. Very dense turf may need spraying off and leaving to die back first, so it breaks up rather than clumping.
Rotavating on its own leaves the ground fluffy and uneven. For seeding, it is usually followed by rolling and raking or harrowing to firm and level the surface.
Rotavate when the soil is moist but crumbly – it should break apart in your hand, not stick in a ball. Rotavating wet clay smears it and can bake into hard lumps; rotavating bone-dry ground just makes dust and bounces off.
For grass seed, spring (March to May) and late summer to early autumn (mid-August to September) are the usual windows. For a vegetable plot, rotavating old turf in autumn and letting the winter frost break it down gives a better tilth by spring.
Booked through us: £600. Real jobs and what they came to — every field is different, so treat these as what past work cost, not a price for yours.