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Mantis Tiller

Posted by Anthony Toop on February 17, 2010 at 7:54pm in Groundscare
Anyone had any experience of using one of these little Mantis tillers before?

Obviously its no good for any large scale work, but for small areas in small to medium gardens i would of thought it would be quite useful, especially the de-thatcher and aerator attachments for small or awkward lawns.
Iv'e hired similar things in the past purely for small scale rotovating work but the mantis appears to be better designed and more powerful, it also has a 4 stroke Honda engine so can't be all bad!
I plan to be doing more lawn renovation work this year but not to the point where i really need to store and maintain seperate rotovator, de-thatcher and aerating machines.
I believe they have a good following from the allotment brigade, and please before someone says 'its not up to commercial standards, won't last five minutes' i realise that, but then it wont' be used every day, not even every week!
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  • Andy Thorne February 17, 2010 at 8:19pm
    I was given a Mantis by an elerly customer whose husband had passed away. I have had problems with the engine, also with the tines - if you get some roots, baler twine or whatever between the gearblock and the tines it is almost imposssible to extract the clip to remove the tine.
    It is however great for rapid breaking up of fairly loose soil. Don't even think about packed clay!

    I haven't tried any other attachments on the mantis but have on the Stihl MultiMachine. Scarifier, brush lack downward force, the areator is really a slitter.

    Good little rotavator but only good for small jobs, ie around shrubs or for very small borders!

    HTH
    Andy
  • Marc Cole February 17, 2010 at 8:23pm
    I use mine all the time, the rotovator on large beds and veggie plots a great bit of kit - in fact for it's price and ability to get every where it's great.

    The dethatcher/areator can be very severe as there's no real way of limiting the height.
  • Anthony Toop February 17, 2010 at 9:15pm
    I did think not having any height adjustment would be an issue, would you say it's possible to just walk quicker across the lawn, albeit backwards! to limit excessive damage or maybe run the engine on half throttle instead?

    Marc Cole said:
    The dethatcher/areator can be very severe as there's no real way of limiting the height.
  • Graeme @ BGS February 17, 2010 at 9:18pm
    Great little machine for turning small beds over but wouldn't even consider using it for anything else. Block book a few jobs in and hire the right equipment,
  • Vanessa Langford February 17, 2010 at 9:39pm
    I inherited my Mantis 10 years ago and use it to break up soil in vegetable gardens and does the job rather well. It's light in weight,so easy to lug around. It can cope with quite heavy soil and is economical on fuel. I use the de- thatcher on my own lawn but usually go over it twice to get good results.
    When not in use regularly start it up one a week or so as the engine can be a pig to get going after a winter sleep.
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