CHOOSING GARDENING TOOLS

by FARMERIK in Connecticut
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For working your vegetable garden and field crops you will need good quality tools, designed for each task. Growing up with power tools that can be adapted to various jobs, we sometimes don't realize how big a difference it makes to have the right tool. It also needs to be of the correct weight and size, to do the job efficiently. If you are not certain which one to choose, bring several, and see which one is easier to work with.

Once in the garden, sometimes you will find it's better to work from the other side of the plants, so try things out as you go. It's important to buy the very best quality you can find, and avoid hardware store "specials" that are made to only look like a tool.

Far left: heavy duty digging fork. Left: special cultivator rake, side shown up for heavy soil, longer side down for weeding fine seed beds. Tools owned & photographed by Miles Stair.

For Raised Bed Gardening, a wide digging fork with two handles is available. It allows you to use both feet to push it into the ground, and both arms to turn the soil. Everyone needs both a shovel and a digging fork. [Note from Miles Stair: The digging fork shown above left has a wide "T" handle for leverage and a brace to push it into the ground. When pulling back to pry out the section of dirt or sod, the brace acts as a lever, easing the work of digging in heavy soils. This is the fork I use in our Oregon Coastal clay soil.]. I use a post hole digger to make holes and work the soil under them when I plant hills of squash or corn, or set out plants.

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The hoe most commonly seen today is for very light, shallow cultivation, and is also called an onion hoe. You pass the thin sharp blade along just under the surface to cut off the roots of the weeds, and there are other styles now too. For making furrows to plant in, I like what is called a Warren hoe, which is pointed. It also works very well hoeing up the sides of hills and raised beds. You need stout field or grape hoes in several widths and weights. These chop heavier soil and plant debris.

A selection of garden forks:  Above left, digging forks; heavy duty, potato, standard digging fork, bulb digging.  Above: bent tine forks; sod lifter, two deep digging strong forks, and a light duty debris raking fork.  At left, two lifting forks, 4 tine standard, 6 tine for chopped debris.  A person does not need all these tools.   Click on a photo to enlarge.

The common steel garden rake is for fine seed beds, but you will want a larger, heavier, and stronger version with longer teeth spaced farther apart, for raking off old vines and stalks or moving more soil. For cultivating a little farther from the plant, something with 2 or 3 "C" shaped tines that go deeply into the soil NEXT to the roots, will aerate the soil and make the crops grow. This should be done every 5 to 10 days until the soil is warm enough to mulch, or you plant a cover crop. When people rototill, they tend to work all of the soil into a fine seed bed, when what you want to do is just work the areas the crop needs. With large seeds like beans or corn, or any plant you set out, you don't need any fine seed bed at all. If working your soil raises a cloud of dust, its too dry; if you squeeze a handful and it forms a lump that doesn't break easily its to wet.

Far left:  hand plow circa 1920's. It makes a fine furrow for seed planting. Left: hand cultivator circa 1960. Flip it over, and the cutter bar slices off small weeds. Tools owned & photographed by Miles Stair.

To grow food with hand tools you need to keep the garden soil free of weeds year around. Don't let it get ahead of you. The next step up to save time and work is a Wheel Hoe. It's powered by you pushing it, and you can attach a variety of very small tools for different garden tasks. I tried pulling it like a mule would, and letting my wife steer it, and that is a lot easier, but it only works with long rows, because the harness has to be long or I'd just pull the wheel hoe up out of the ground. LEHMAN'S HARDWARE has most of these tools in one catalog.

From the 1930's into the 1960's, many simple 2 wheel garden tractors were made for cultivating, and they will plow established gardens too. Sears and Montgomery Wards both offered them. Gravely made much more capable and complicated machines from the late thirties until just a few years ago, and parts are available for most all of them. The riding garden tractor really came into its own after World War II, but by the 1970's I think they were getting to big. Wheel Horse, Sears and many others offered these miniature farm tractors with moldboard plows, seeders, disk harrows, and cultivators. Different brands were sold in different areas of the country, and you will have to be able to maintain them yourself, and hunt for parts you need, since they may be obsolete. Look for a heavy cast iron gearbox model, sold as a garden tractor, not a riding mower. I put new small engines on them, which use a tiny amount of fuel, and are easy to start by hand. YAHOO has many groups of collectors of these tractors, and there are links there to huge amounts of information about each kind of garden tractor. - See Garden Tractor Gardening for more information.   FARMERIK