Productive Down Time: Tool Maintenance and the Perfect Garden Hoe.

Yesterday was interesting.  Usually, I have all my seeds ordered between January and February, for some reason, I drug my feet this year.   I scoured the internet looking for onion sets, garlic, potatoes, and quality veges.  Most of my regular seed carriers are out of the tried and tested staples. I ended up piece-mealing my seed

purchasing across the web.  Many of these sites have zero reviews so it should be interesting.  I'm avoiding experimentation with varieties this year and shooting for production.

I feel like my gardening has more purpose this year.  Anyone else feeling like that?    

It rained all day yesterday but I didn't care, had to get out of the house at all cost.  Had a pretty productive day pruning grasses, setting up a better deer fence for a tree, and putting up a hot-house on a raised bed.

In this flurry of spring gardening madness, I noticed that my tools need some loving maintenance, so that's on the productivity list.

I did a basic assessment of the tools I have on hand and realized I need some kind of garden hoe.

I'm lucky enough to have quite a few garden tools from great grandfathers.   The old tools are bulletproof, the new ones not so much.  

I'm pretty hard on tools, last year I tore the head off of a big box hoe so I need a new one.       I don't care for the typical square hoe, I find them almost useless for no-dig gardening.

What kind of Garden Hoe are you using?   Do you have a favorite, and why?

Cheers.

I use two a draw hoe and a dutch hoe. for no dig the draw hoe would be much better than the dutch I would guess

(Draw hoe)


(Dutch hoe)

I use these type, never really decided what their name is. Hula hoe is stupid, and I don't use it as a rocking device, I use it a a sliding thing I can chop lightly with. The guy who taught me to use one was an old guy in Arkansas with a thick accent when I was a teenager. He told me it was straoup hoe. I said "stirrup? or Strap?" (Made out of a strap, shaped like a stirrup.) He said "Straoup straoup!!" No clue what he called it :) I call it a strap hoe.



Mostly if I cultivate I use a mattock or grub hoe. The weight lets me get a decent swing on them. Also have a hand sized one too.
Mattock head, it's a grub hoe blade on one side, axe blade on the other. I keep it very sharp.



Grub hoe



Mine look like those, old, mean beasties. A nice one looks like this, don't have any of them :)



I also use something akin to this, WAY cheaper, old beat up thing that I can't break. didn't see a pic of it online.



I sharpen my tools well, makes it a LOT easier to work with them. Shovels etc have a decent edge on them. Things like mattock are axe sharp. I have strength issues, sharp helps a LOT.

I'm so hard on tools I think those wouldn't last a week.  Maybe it's because I'm not keeping them sharp.

I like the looks of this if I could get it with a longer handle.

Pearl, I like the one in the third picture down.  

I could probably find one at a yard sale.  Probably not going to happen for a while.

HI Skandi,

I've ruined these kinds of hoes.  If I could get one that's well made they might stand up.

Scott Foster wrote:Pearl, I like the one in the third picture down.  

I could probably find one at a yard sale.  Probably not going to happen for a while.

If you are shopping yard sales you have to go a lot of places, see a lot of people and it's iffy what is being offered at each one. I find the heads, without handles, at vintage/antique shops quite often, for under 5.00. I have seen the heads at hardware stores too, they are around, few people buy them. Try a small local hardware store, not a big box place, more luck in the little stores.

And yeah, I agree, tools have to be sturdy, or I break them. I buy them second hand, the older the better.

My favorite new ones come from rogue hoe. Recycled from big ag disk blades. And really stout handles

Yep, I definitely feel like the garden has more purpose this year.

I just came in from getting some areas ready to plant, well close to ready. I switched to no till in last few years, so much easier I think. My soil has a lot of clay and doesn't dry out well early in the season. Used too I would wait till it was dry enough and fire up the tiller and do it all at once. By time it dried out though it was also full of weeds which constantly had to be cleaned from the tiller. And a lot of things could have already been planted.

Now I go out and using nothing but my three favorite tools, hoe, shovel, and rake I can get a 4 X 50 bed ready in just a few minutes. I don't dig the planting bed much at all. I keep my tools near razor sharp and shave, not chop the paths bare. I scoop that up and toss in in the grow bed. Or sometimes I use the shovel to shave the top inch or so off the path and turn it upside down in the bed. I have a lot of a weed I call Creeping Charley, I think it might also be called Henbit. It's a ground cover type weed that explodes into growth in spring. When time to plant I just hoe my rows and mostly leave the weed to grow between. It serves I think as camouflage for seedlings. Especially in case of corn and birds. Later when it looks like there is noting but weeds I pull or hoe between the rows and use it as mulch and the vegetables all of a sudden do their own explosion of growth.

My hoes and shovels are all old, I've collected them at yard sales and farm auctions for years cause the new ones seem pretty flimsy by comparison. I sharpen them a lot, my oldest one which was my grandfathers is more a razor blade but I still use it sometimes. Like I said I don't chop or dig with my hoe, I keep it sharp! even the corners and sides so it cuts good and I oil them and their handles with linseed oil at least once a year.  The work is easy, the only weed that gives me trouble with that technique is grass but I've mostly eliminated that from my garden. I'm also lucky to have very few rocks in my soil. I like the sticky feel and smell of the linseed oil when I get my tools out each spring.

I wondered if folks were having any trouble getting seed. I didn't place any orders this year except for some peanuts and sweet potato slips and I got those orders in early. I've been saving my own for sometime and have a good supply and variety of my own beans, corn, tomatoes, squash and other things. I stopped "trialing" varieties a long time ago.

R Scott wrote:My favorite new ones come from rogue hoe. Recycled from big ag disk blades. And really stout handles

Thanks R,  These look pretty solid. I will check them out.

Thanks for the input M. R.

Sounds like you have it down to a science.   I should be better about seed collecting.  I do pretty good with flowers but I always get behind on the eight-ball on the veges.

I do like planting something new, but more times than not, it's a mistake.  I had huge harvest of tomatoes last year but they were the worst tasting tomatoes ever.  Hahaha.

These are the primary tools I use in my garden. I have a heavy peasant hoe that I use occasionally but don't need it all that often, just when I make a whole new planting bed of encounter a particularly stubborn weed like a clump of perennial grass.  



As you can see they need a little cleaning right now. I just used them to clean off a couple paths.

That weed is the Creeping Charlie I mentioned before. I love that weed, it plays hell with a roto-tiller but with no till it's a great ally. Grows fast and furious in spring, momma bumblebees love it. Soon I'll pull / hoe off just what I need to put in my seeds. Little after that the Creeping Charlie will have grown big. At that point it is supper easy to pull up and just lay back down for mulch. With combination of hotter drier weather and competition from the vegetables it won't regrow much at all until the next winter.

If I had one and only one garden tool it would be a grub hoe like this one pictured below.

You can dig, gather materials, weed, dig furrows, etc.  Kept properly, the blade edge should kept razor sharp with a file that I received with mine.  These are solid, heavy forged hoes whose combination of weight and sharp edge make for easy digging and are easy on the back.

Eric

Those look very much like what I call my peasant hoe. Could chop down a tree with that thing.

Mark,

Yes, you could chop a tree.  It would be a little awkward, but I bet it would be great for chopping out a stump.

I can't see myself ever buying a stamped steel hoe ever again.

Eric

There are claims that a ploskorez is sufficent for all weeding.
Can someone confirm this or name a better tool?