Black & Decker LGC120 20V Cordless Cultivator

I take gardening both as a hobby and as a means to save more on food. This is why I grow some veggies in a small garden. Speaking of budget, I make use of gardening hacks just to save a few more dollars, especially on tools. While I love to have quality tools, some of my gardening tasks are only routinary, like digging, weeding, and cultivating. A budget-friendly and time-saving tool can certainly do that. Apparently, the Black & Decker LGC120 20V can do the hack. It’s easy on the pocket, and it saves both my back and plenty of my time.

1. Things To Consider Before Buying A Cultivator

First up, cultivators are not the same as tillers, although some people love to interchange the two terms. Well, it’s true that some power gardening tools can do both tilling and cultivating. So, if you’re looking for a heavy-duty tool, you might want to take a look at the specs.

Tiller or Cultivator?

If you’re using a tool to beat up hardened soil for the first time, then you need a tiller. After sowing seeds and seeing initial growth in your plants, you can aerate the soil with a cultivator. As weeds start to war against your greens, you can use the cultivator to disturb the soil beneath them. As a result, weeding would become an easier task.

In this review, we feature a cordless, battery-powered cultivator which fits just right for a small garden. If you’re looking to break up a huge span of hardened soil, you may want to check out a tiller instead.

Cultivator Type

Cultivators can come in three types:

• • Manual. These are your typical hand tools. You can have them if you enjoy a little bit of workout in your garden, and if your garden is small and manageable enough.
  • Gas-Powered. Usually, they’re the more powerful machines, although some electric cultivators can already be as powerful. Obviously, you need to set another budget for fueling these guys.
  • Electric Corded. If plugging into an outlet or making use of an extension cord isn’t a problem for you, then you might consider these push-button cultivators.

• Electric Cordless. Here’s where ease comes in, typically with some bits of compromise on power. Of course, you may find a leeway for that—choose models with high battery capacity, purchase extra batteries, or simply do something else in your garden while charging. Even a 20V power will do for small gardens.

2. The Black & Decker LGC120 20V

The 20V power by the company, Black & Decker, is a budget-friendly power tool. While its 20V-max lithium-ion battery may seem to have a rather low capacity, it can already cultivate a 325-sq-ft land in a single charge. Its tangle-free tine design gives it the right to vie for the best cordless cultivator title, even just for the small-garden category.

This lightweight cultivator is ideal for day-to-day small garden maintenance for hobbyists and pros alike. If you’re looking for a mini-cultivator that can help you weed out or simply aerate your soil, the LGC120 offers its humble services.

3. Features & Benefits of the Black & Decker LGC120 20V 

The LGC120 battery-powered cultivator can easily become your favorite tool if you’re maintaining a small garden.

20V-Max, 2Ah Battery Rating

If you’ve been looking into cordless cultivators lately, you might have noticed that the LGC120 seems to be short of the standard battery rating. Typically, you’ll see 40V-max, 4Ah battery-operated cultivators, and they run on small to medium-sized gardens in about 45 minutes.

The Black & Decker LGC120, on the other hand, has half of that rating. Does it perform half as great, too?

Well, when tested, a run-time can last up to 20 minutes. It may not seem long enough for a 50’ x 50’ garden, but it will do for an 18’ x 18’ one.

Lithium-Ion Battery

Despite having a conservative battery power, the LGC120 has a lithium-ion kind. It’s way better than NiCad batteries and can be charged anytime without suffering from the so-called memory effect.

This means you don’t have to wait for the battery to get fully drained before recharging it. You may, instead, plug it in every time you’re taking breaks in cultivating.

5-Hour Charging Time

In some tests, the Black+Decker LGC120 can get fully charged in 5 hours, but it can take as long as 8 hours. That amounts to an overnight charging. It may matter if you want to do more work in one sitting, but if your garden is small enough, it will probably be just fine.

Again, you may always purchase a backup battery for more continuous work, or check out the 40V-battery version, or some of the alternative cultivators as listed below.

Two, Separate Ergonomic Handles

The handle design of the LGC120 cultivator is quite unique. Overall, the power tool has a unibody, making it very portable and lightweight. It weighs only 8.1 lbs, by the way.

This means it’s a great tool for our gardening moms and grandmoms. The adjustable handle design makes it even easier to maneuver and carry around the backyard.

The handles also have a soft-grip cover, so they provide comfort even if you’re not wearing gloves.

Counter-Oscillating, Removable Tines

The tines in this battery-powered cultivator are also unique. They counter-oscillate—meaning they turn in opposite directions. Besides, they aren’t the typical tines you see in other cultivators. They turn like screws into your soil. The whole set-up thus makes it virtually impossible for weeds to get tangled in the cultivator.

Add the removable feature, and the tines will be so easy to clean.

4-Inch Tilling Depth

Black & Deckers brands the LGC120 as a tiller/cultivator, which makes one suppose it can do heavy-duty tilling. With only up to 4 inches of tilling depth, though, it doesn’t really sound like one.

And yet, the LGC120 brings to the table something that the other 4”-5”-deep cultivators don’t. Its unique screw-like tine design enables it to somehow break easily into hard soil despite limited reach.

7-Inch Tilling Width

For large gardens, this tilling width seems to mock the fatigue associated with the work of tilling and cultivating, and yet for small gardens, it’s quite just the right size.

This 7-inch tilling width is not adjustable though, so it’s really only for small gardens, or at least those large garden with small spaces you would like to occasionally aerate or clean up.

Environment-Friendly

As all battery-powered cultivators typically are, the Black+Decker 20V LGC120 is a friend to the environment. It releases zero emissions in your garden, helping you reduce your carbon footprint more sustainably.

4. What Users Say About the Black & Decker LGC120 20V

Let’s say what other users of this little cultivator have to say about its performance. It helps to know their opinion before you finalize your buying choice.

Gets Work Done Without Getting Tangled

Well, I’m really interested in weed tangling because I suffer from it when using other products. Here’s one more proof that the LGC120 doesn’t get tangled.

Tills Like An Egg-Beater

I think she’s saying you can even use the power tool with one hand. Well, turns out the LGC120 beats hard soil efficiently, especially with its well-designed, screw-like or egg-beater-like tines.

Battery Power Can Last Longer

I had a rather low estimate of only 20mins run-time above, but that’s non-stop and apparently not even fully charged. It turns out you can run the mini-tiller even up to an hour, but it’s most probably with a few breaks here and there

5. Alternatives to the Black & Decker LGC120 20V

The Black+Decker 20V  may be useful; but, we can’t argue how people can always have varying preferences. In case you wish to look around for some other cultivators, I’ve provided a list of three alternatives below:

• Greenworks 10-Inch 40V, 4.0 Ah Battery Included 27062
• Earthwise TC70040 Cordless Electric Tiller/Cultivator
• Sun Joe TJ604E 16-Inch 13.5 Amp Electric Garden Tiller/Cultivator

Greenworks 10-Inch 40V, 4.0 Ah Battery Included 27062

The Greenworks 40V offers about twice as much as what the Black & Decker LGC120 offers—well, in almost all aspects. If you don’t mind spending more to get the specs you want, you may want to buy this alternative instead.

Interested? Check out the Greenworks 10-Inch 40V Cordless Cultivator (with 4.0 Ah Battery; model 27062) or see first our full review of this product.

Earthwise TC70040 Cordless Electric Tiller/Cultivator

The Earthwise TC70040 has similar specs and price with the Greenworks 27062. And yet, the Earthwise Tiller/Cultivator has a rather bold claim. It brands itself as both a tiller and a cultivator. Because it can dig up to 8” in depth and aerate soil up to 11” in width, it’s apparently more powerful than the Black & Decker LGC120.

Interested? Check out the Earthwise TC70040 Cordless Electric Tiller/Cultivator here or see first our full review of this product.

Sun Joe TJ604E 16-Inch 13.5 Amp Electric Garden Tiller/Cultivator

Electric cultivators, as you might remember, have two types. You’ve seen three examples already from above. If having to deal with cords isn’t really much of a problem with you, you may rather want to invest in an electric corded cultivator such as the Sun Joe TJ604E.

Like the Earthwise 40 Cordless Cultivator, the Sun Joe TJ604E Corded Tiller can till up to 8 inches deep. It also has a very wide tilling width at 16”. This could be the power tool for you if you got a big garden.

Interested? Check out the Sun Joe TJ604E 16-Inch 13.5 Amp Electric Garden Tiller/Cultivator here or see first our full review of this product.

Need other tools? Check out the Gonicc 8” Professional  here or see our full review of the product.

Conclusion: The Black & Decker LGC120 20V Is A Budget-Friendly Small Garden Tiller

Tilling and cultivating are two essential gardening tasks. You’ll most likely need a separate tool for each. For small gardens, though, you can look for the best cultivator that is already capable of doing both. For that matter, the best garden cultivator should have the power and design to break a hardened ground and prepare it for seeding.

The Black & Decker LGC120 20V offers a budget-friendly solution to both your tilling and cultivating needs. It can aerate your garden soil without getting tangled with weeds with its specially-designed tines.

Who knows if it can rightly claim to be the best cultivator for small garden projects? You may go ahead and check it out for yourself. Click here.

Check our other reviews: DeWit 5-Tine Hand Cultivator with Short Handle