A rototiller is a motorized gardening machine that breaks up and mixes soil using spinning metal blades. Instead of digging with a shovel, which takes hours of hard work, you can push or guide a rototiller across a garden plot and watch it churn the earth into loose, workable soil in minutes.

The machine's blades, called tines, rotate rapidly and dig into the ground, breaking up hard clumps of dirt, chopping through weeds, and mixing in old plant material. Gardeners use rototillers when preparing a new garden bed or getting soil ready for spring planting. The churned soil makes it much easier for seeds to sprout and for young plant roots to spread.

Rototillers come in different sizes. Small ones are light enough for a homeowner to push around a backyard garden, while large ones work almost like small tractors on farms. Some people call them tillers for short. While a rototiller saves tremendous effort compared to hand digging, it still requires strength and attention to control as it bounces and pulls across uneven ground.