Organic Hobby Farming. Andy Tomolonis
called a Canterbury hoe, has three prongs instead of a blade and is well suited to busting up sod or pulling out the heavy roots of perennial weeds. It can also rake potatoes out of a hill without too much damage to the tubers.
The blade of a grubbing hoe is thicker and heavier than the business end of a weeding hoe. It chops into soil and is ideal for creating raised beds.
Digging Bar
The last of my must-have manual digging tools is the often-overlooked and incredibly versatile digging bar. Once you use one for the first time, you’ll wonder how you got by without it for so long. At about $25, a digging bar will quickly pay for itself in shovel handles you don’t have to replace.
There are several variations, but my favorite is a 6-ft. (1.8-m) -long solid-steel bar, about 1½ in. (4 cm) in diameter, with a pointed tip on one end and a 2-in. (5-cm) -wide chiseling edge on the other. When I run into large rocks with my mattock, grub hoe, or shovel—and there are plenty of big rocks in southeastern New England—I plunge the pointed end of my digging bar around the perimeter of the rock to judge its size. If it’s movable, I thrust the chisel end of the bar underneath until it catches a ridge. I then push a piece of wood or another rock close to the boulder to use as a fulcrum. With a quick pry (or maybe a few), most 50- to 100-lb. (22.5- to 45-kg) rocks can be shifted and lifted.
A digging bar is also indispensable for creating pilot holes to pound in stakes, pipes, or posts for trellis netting. In addition, you can wedge the bar beneath the main roots of a small tree or large shrub and wiggle it back and forth to loosen the soil before prying out the stump.
Easy Does It!
Don’t throw away a broken shovel. I have a blade that I saved from a shovel that broke many years ago (before I bought a digging bar). I find it useful for scooping compost out of a wheelbarrow and top-dressing crops. It’s also good for stirring compost, perlite, and soil amendments to make potting mixes and for any chore that needs an oversized scoop. A hoe or weeder with a broken handle can be fitted with another wooden handle, or simply cut shorter and turned into a large-bladed hand tool. I have one that I use for hilling potatoes. As I pull up the stalks with one hand, I use the mini-hoe to scoop soil with the other.
Easy Does It!
If you bend a tine on your favorite digging fork, don’t despair. It can be fixed quite easily. Just pound a section of pipe into the ground, deep enough so that it won’t move side to side when you try to shake it. Leave about a foot of the pipe sticking up.
Insert the bent tine into the top of the pipe and gently pull the digging fork’s handle until the tines are back in line.
Hand tools
Sometimes you need to get close to your work, and that calls for using hand tools. There are trowels for transplanting, hand weeders for working between rows, and hand rakes for light work.
Trowels
Keep several of these handy for transplanting, seeding, scooping fertilizers, and occasionally for squashing a nasty bug. Two big considerations are the size of the blade and ergonomics. Wide blades scoop more soil and make the work go faster, but narrow blades are easier for digging small transplanting holes. A stainless steel blade resists rust, and a comfortable handle is essential when planting on hundred tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings.
Hand Weeders
Hand weeders come in as many varieties as upright weeders. Tools with small blades are great for tight places. One good choice is the Cape Cod weeder, which has a small teardrop-shaped blade for precision.
Hand Rakes
A small hand rake is sometimes useful for smoothing out areas of soil before direct-seeding, especially on raised beds.
Other Choices
I like using a mason’s pointing trowel, which works two jobs: first as a dibble for transplanting small lettuce seedlings and secondly as a weeder, deftly scraping away tiny weeds just below the soil surface.
The Weeders
The majority of organic growers will tell you their most tiresome task is weeding. Tools aside, the best method for fighting weeds is a comprehensive strategy that controls the weed seed bank, thereby keeping weed seeds from getting started at all. Mowing the area around beds keeps weed seeds from dispersing onto fields, mulches help smother weeds before they get a foothold, and keeping soil loose and friable makes it easier to pull weeds once they germinate. However, no matter how much you prepare, some dormant seeds will always make their way to the soil’s surface. Once they germinate, you’ll need to deal with them before they develop deep roots and tough stems. An arsenal of weed-eating tools is available to you for fighting this battle—just remember to do your weeding in the early morning so that the weeds shrivel and disappear in the midday sun.
Basic Hoe
The ordinary garden hoe is a multi-duty tool that eliminates weeds but also digs, moves earth, shapes beds, and cuts planting furrows in loose soil. Even when confined to the single task of weeding, it has multiple purposes. With light pressure, it scrapes tiny weed-lings from the surface of the soil—without unearthing new seeds to germinate. Add a little muscle, and it cuts deeper to uproot larger weeds. Finally, it can chop the ground and roots around stubborn weeds, then pull them out with a firm tug.
It’s also useful for shaping raised beds. Standing on one side of a raised bed, use the hoe to reach across and pull up soil from the other side. You can use a steel rake to smooth out the bed later. When you top-dress an unplanted bed with compost, dump a wheelbarrow load in one area and spread it around with a hoe first, then smooth it with a steel rake. Hoes will also help you pile soil around potato plants and cut clean, straight rows through finished beds, allowing you to quickly drop in seeds or transplants.
Look for a comfortable, well-made hoe, since it’s a tool that you’ll turn to for many tasks. One of the things I require is a handle that’s long enough to accommodate my large frame. (I’m over 6 ft. [1.8 m] tall, and I don’t like tools with short handles that make me bend at the waist.) Before buying a hoe, stand in the store and test it, going through the motions. Make sure the handle is long enough for you to do the job without tiring.
Although the basic hoe is versatile on its own, there are a number of specialty blades with different features: The triangular hoe, also called a Warren hoe, has a pointed blade that’s ideal for cutting neat furrows. It also picks weeds out of tight spots. Some other specialty hoes are designed to make the chore of weeding more efficient.
The versatile garden hoe will move the earth—or if you prefer, it can shape beds and eradicate weeds.
Collinear Hoe
This better-built hoe is small, lightweight, and crafted to prevent fatigue, with the blade designed at a sharp angle to the handle so users can stand completely upright, gripping the handle with thumbs up and cutting weeds with a gentle sweeping motion. The collinear hoe is the design of organic farming guru Eliot Coleman, who is also a tool consultant at Johnny’s Selected Seeds.
The hoe has a thin, narrow 4-in. (10-cm) blade that is easy to control and suited for working through established beds, scratching in and around heads of lettuce, salad greens, garlic, and other delicate vegetables. A larger 6-in. (15-cm) blade is available for wider areas, but it can still be maneuvered into tight places. Another version has a removable blade for easy sharpening. There’s also a hand-sized collinear hoe for close-up work.
Hoes with smaller blades, such as the collinear hoe, the diamond hoe, and this small pull hoe, have smaller blades that can be used for weeding close to leaf lettuce and other garden crops.
Oscillating Hoe
Call it a hula