I was published recently over at GardenRant.com with a quick rant about off-grid garden tilling:

“For years I rented rototillers or—more expensively—owned gas tillers of my own.

There’s nothing like tearing up a big patch of ground until your hands are so numb and tingly you can barely hoist a glass to celebrate your gardening rampage.

Many of us feel like we should cut back on our gas usage. Others don’t like tillers because they really don’t loosen soil that deeply. Still others just don’t want to shell out the big bucks on a machine that’s likely to get a buried brick stuck in the tines just before sunset when you’re half-way through the spring garden you really, really, really want to plant the next morning.

The more paranoid among us (author raises hand) figure we should go low-tech now before civilization is wiped out by an EMP, prime-time TV, an asteroid or all of the above.

Yet it took me a while to really get a solid tool set that allowed me to park the tiller for good. Sure, I borrowed John Jeavon’s “double-digging” method of creating deep, laboriously loosened beds with a spade and fork … but what if you don’t have serious time to put in a garden and you just want to chop some earth and pop in tomatoes?”

You should enjoy the entire post. They’ve been kind enough to publish two of my articles so far.

Garden Rant is one of the largest gardening sites on the web, as best as I can tell, and it’s great getting a Good Article(TM) in over there now and again.

Staying on top of my posting here and on YouTube makes it tough to write as many magazine articles and guest posts as I’d like. I’m thinking of building a little office for myself so I can have a quieter space to write books and record YouTube videos.

Maybe an 8′ x 8′ done in sections, so I can disassemble it when we have to move. That would probably be a good investment. As it is, I have my computer in our bedroom but the house is wide open, as are the windows, so there’s a lot of noise and distractions.

Part of this is my fault, as it’s more fun to sit on the bed with my three-year-old and pretend we’re catching fish off a boat than it is to write gardening article.

Ah well, such is life.