Removing Sod, Which Hoe Should I Buy?

I want to turn a few acres of lawn/ grass into something more productive. Part of that is very poor pasture that I want to seed with a better mix for my goats. The grass that grows there doesn't grow very tall (even when there were no animals eating it) and it has lots of weeds that don't happen to be the weeds that they eat. I also want to make more garden beds in a faster way than what I have been doing. Basically I want to remove the sod, add some compost on top, and then plant my seeds, both for the pasture and the garden.

I recently read about a "grubbing hoe" in an older thread here and I think this is just the tool I need. A Google search brought me to this website https://www.easydigging.com/garden-hoes/ and they look good! But does anyone have any experience or recommendations? A different company that is better?

I'm a fairly strong and healthy 5'5", 40-year-old woman. Yikes, that sounds awful, haha. But I'm wondering if there are particular tools better-suited to women (or smaller men?). My back does tend to get sore more easily these days, so I'm looking for something ergonomic where I can efficiently remove sod from a larger area pretty quickly. I'm thinking of getting the 6" grubbing hoe for the Easy Digging site, but am wondering if it will be too heavy. At the same time, heavy can be a good thing, because when you lift it you can just let it drop and the weight does the work. My soil is mostly sand on top of clay, not many rocks at all.

I do not want to use a tiller or anything mechanical, just looking for a better tool to do it by hand.

I've never used a hoe because I'm too tall and a hoe requires me to uncomfortably bend over as I work. For weeding I've always used my spade. The spade is also much better as I find it is wonderful for weeding along a fence as you can lift it along the fence and drives straight down to the very edge of the fence bottom.

I've also never  remove the sod as most places it's the only top soil I see on the places I've lived. I always turn it over into the, clay, soil. Seems to me that for a couple acres you should be thinking of renting a sod cutter.

I do have a mortar hoe that came with the house purchase. I find it wonderful for creating a deep furrow that I then plant seed potatoes in. I rotate it so that one of the corners is what's at the bottom as I drag it the whole length of my potato patch.

John Indaburgh wrote:I've never used a hoe because I'm too tall and a hoe requires me to uncomfortably bend over as I work. For weeding I've always used my spade. The spade is also much better as I find it is wonderful for weeding along a fence as you can lift it along the fence and drives straight down to the very edge of the fence bottom.

I've also never  remove the sod as most places it's the only top soil I see on the places I've lived. I always turn it over into the, clay, soil. Seems to me that for a couple acres you should be thinking of renting a sod cutter.

I do have a mortar hoe that came with the house purchase. I find it wonderful for creating a deep furrow that I then plant seed potatoes in. I rotate it so that one of the corners is what's at the bottom as I drag it the whole length of my potato patch.

Thanks! Yes, the sod does contain the best soil, but I'm piling it up for compost, so nothing is wasted. I could try just turning the shovel-fulls it upside down, but I'm not sure this stubborn grass won't make it's way all the way up and out anyway. At first I was shaking all the soil out of the roots to save all that nice, darkish soil around the grass roots, but I soon decided it would take me all year to make the beds I needed. Cutting off the sod with a trowel is faster, but I am thinking with the right hoe, I could just stand there and cut and pull the sod away and make a nice, clear bed, much more quickly, add some compost, and plant away. These good-quality hoes are expensive (to me) but I think if I get the right one it will last the rest of my life and be worth it.

Lila,

A good, heavy grub hoe is a great tool for working in the earth.  It should be forged, not stamped steel and be able to sharpen absolutely razor sharp with a file.  I have one and I love it if I have to dig in earth.

Eric

In a lot of threads that I have read, the recommendation is to use the sod turned upside down and then compost or mulch before planting the seeds.

The kind of tool I would want to use would lift squares of sod.  At least that is how I imagine that it would be done.

I am imagining a flat-end shovel to do this. Cut the sod into squares the size of the flat end shovel.

I hope others will chime in as to how the remove sod.

Another option for sod removal would be a grape hoe.  A grape hoe is similar to a grub hoe but the angle is different, better for chopping parallel to the level of the ground.

I own both a grub and grape hoe and got mine through easy digging.com.

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:Another option for sod removal would be a grape hoe.  A grape hoe is similar to a grub hoe but the angle is different, better for chopping parallel to the level of the ground.

I own both a grub and grape hoe and got mine through easy digging.com.

Eric

Thanks! I think it was a post of yours in an old thread that introduced me to the idea of a grub hoe. Easy Digging is the first site I came to through Google, and the one I am most considering buying from. The different options are a bit overwhelming, but I think I've narrowed it down to their two different sizes of grub hoe (leaning towards the 6" wide one) or the grape hoe. I'm probably overthinking it; any of those options would probably be fine, and an improvement over what I've been doing so far.

Several acres? By hand? I'm concerned that is too ambitious. Of course it's your call.

For hand tools, the most effective and ergonomically efficient tool I've ever found is a long-handled spade, lightweight and thin with good steel, well sharpened. You push it into the sod at a shallow angle, maybe 1/2 inch deep, and float along at that depth, cutting the actively growing grass crowns. Lather, rinse, repeat. The grass's sod layer is constantly weakened, to the point where you can deny it light with a tarp or even flip the sod you cut to smother it.

==Mechanical Devices You May Not Have Thought Of==

I know, not your thing, but FWIW, hear me out.

You can rent a mechanical gizmo called a sod cutter. It cuts sod at a depth you preset, so you can peel off the living crown and leave behind the dying roots and historical peat in the lower layers. Then you do a mop-up operation with sharp mechanical tools, catching the stragglers.

The same thing applies with a tractor-mounted rototiller. You can set it very shallow, less than an inch deep, and chew up/pull up the living crown from several angles. This will not compact the soil IME -- the lower sod layers are like a sponge or shock absorber. Again, you do the mop-up operation by hand. That's my method, and it's more efficient for larger areas. My 2c.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Several acres? By hand? I'm concerned that is too ambitious. Of course it's your call.

For hand tools, the most effective and ergonomically efficient tool I've ever found is a long-handled spade, lightweight and thin with good steel, well sharpened. You push it into the sod at a shallow angle, maybe 1/2 inch deep, and float along at that depth, cutting the actively growing grass crowns. Lather, rinse, repeat. The grass's sod layer is constantly weakened, to the point where you can deny it light with a tarp or even flip the sod you cut to smother it.

==Mechanical Devices You May Not Have Thought Of==

I know, not your thing, but FWIW, hear me out.

You can rent a mechanical gizmo called a sod cutter. It cuts sod at a depth you preset, so you can peel off the living crown and leave behind the dying roots and historical peat in the lower layers. Then you do a mop-up operation with sharp mechanical tools, catching the stragglers.

The same thing applies with a tractor-mounted rototiller. You can set it very shallow, less than an inch deep, and chew up/pull up the living crown from several angles. This will not compact the soil IME -- the lower sod layers are like a sponge or shock absorber. Again, you do the mop-up operation by hand. That's my method, and it's more efficient for larger areas. My 2c.

Thanks! For this spring season, I'm just trying to get maybe 3/4 acre done; up to 2 acres by next spring.

Ok, so I had never heard of a sod-cutter before making this post. Someone else mentioned one previously, but I thought it would be a big tractor-machine that I wouldn't be able to handle. That actually sounds amazing. It looks like I can rent one at the big box hardware store an hour away for $110/day. I could get everything I want done in a day. I'm going to call a few small local feed stores too; maybe I can get one closer.

I actually enjoy removing sod by hand, but it's also just really time-consuming and really holding up my progress. Now is planting time here in Texas, and I am still preparing the ground. So the sod-cutter does seem like the practical thing in this case.

AND something I just thought of, because it's sort of a "fun toy" I might be able to get my husband to do it for me, haha. He is very uninterested in gardening, but he does like playing with machines. That would save me even more time.

So, I ended up buying the 6" grub hoe and the grape hoe from Easy Digging. I still may rent a sod-cutter someday in the future, but the nearest one is an hour away, and I knew logistically it wouldn't happen soon. I bought both hoes because Easy Digging offers free shipping on orders over $100, and the shipping on 1 hoe was something like $25, so I only ended up spending about $35 more for both hoes than I would have for just one. Also I was having a hard time deciding.

I really like both of them for my purposes! Each uses a very slightly different motion, even for the same job, so, at least now, while I'm getting a feel for things, I tend to switch back and forth between them when I get tired. They are heavy, and it is a workout! Which I actually really love. Because they are so much more ergonomic to use then a shovel, I am able to just keep right on going until I get tired, without being limited by the tension that shoveling creates in my hips and back (even when I really try to shovel ergonomically). I also feel the hoes do get the job done a lot faster. They are also super versatile. As I use them more and get stronger, I really think I can get a lot done with these tools!

I am using the grub hoe more than the grape hoe for what I am doing now, which is just chopping up the sod and then removing the grass and roots by shaking them out a bit them by hand. The straight blade of the grub hoe is ideal for this. This way I leave us much topsoil as I can in the bed. I put the grass and roots, and the soil that clings to them, on the downhill side of each bed, since we live on a slight slope, to help slow down runoff when it rains heavily.

I have also used the grape hoe and the grub hoe both to simply remove the sod, without shaking out any soil, but I have to go pretty deep to get all the tough grass rhizomes, and that meant removing a lot of the best, darkest soil. That is a much quicker way, though, so I am glad to have the option of both. The grub hoe works well removing sod, but the grape hoe is designed better for that purpose. If I could only buy one I would get the grub hoe.  

I spend a lot of time just reading and learning here, so I figured I would post my experience for anyone with a similar question.

I'm a fairly strong and healthy 5'5", 40-year-old man. I've been having great success with a drain spade on clay lawn, not hardpan. I make shallow vertical cuts around an area approximately the size of the blade, then I go under from one end as close to horizontal as I can get it and either thrust with the handle against my thigh/pelvis or give gentle kicks with my boot to cut a strip of sod approximately 12" x 4-6" x 2-4"

This photo is the first stage of the bed I dug out for the pumpkins.

Hey Peace, that's great stuff. It's amazing what a simple tool can accomplish when you just keep going, slow and easy.

I'm now using the same technique to dig a circular faerie garden around an old hickory stump with moss-tinged turkey tails all around its Eastern and Northern sides.

Circles are slightly more difficult than rectangles, but I'm about 70% done. After I finish this, I'm going to dig out three more rectangular beds for more vegetables next to the pumpkin patch.