By Charles Kidder
What if you’re on Jeopardy, or perhaps in a Trivial Pursuit tournament, and need to know the difference between a spade and a shovel? Well, read on, and you’ll find the answer to this burning question, plus you’ll discover some tools I have grown to know and love over my years of gardening.
According to some sources, a spade is actually a type of shovel, so you can start picturing some type of Venn diagram here. A spade has a nearly flat blade and a straight edge. Notice that “spade,z’ “flat” and “straight” all have an “a” in them, so there’s your mnemonic. (And I need a device that helps me remember the spelling of mnemonic.) A plain old shovel has a rounded blade and a pointed edge. And note the “o” in “shovel,” “rounded” and “pointed.”
Of course, more important than the nomenclature is the respective uses of the spade and shovel. With its sharp, straight edge, the spade is good for cutting, as in edging a bed, peeling up turf, or whacking through roots. Its relatively shallow, small blade is not so good for moving much soil. That’s where the shovel excels. Shovels more typically have long handles, and spades have short ones, although I happen to own all four possible combinations.
When digging in tough Piedmont clay, another helpful tool is the mattock. I own a cutter mattock, with a non-sharpened axe blade on one side of the handle, and an adze on the other. Using the adze, I can quickly bust up a lot of soil, especially when it’s become dry and brick-like. The axe blade can then deal with any roots in my way. Once the soil and roots are broken up, I can easily use a shovel to clear out the loose dirt. I also own a mini-mattock, a type of planting hoe. About one third the size of a real mattock but with the same configuration, it’s ideal for planting perennials when you’re down on your hands and knees.
For moving mulch in the garden, I’ve found an ensilage fork to be indispensable. Typically with ten tines that form a scoop about sixteen-inches square, you can move a decent amount of mulch with one stroke. One caution: if the mulch is really heavy and wet, don’t overload the fork, or you’ll risk straining your back. A pitchfork can also be used to move mulch, but it tends to drop between the tines if it’s dry. A cultivating fork, with its flat tines and short handle is good for dropping a small dollop of mulch in close quarters. And of course a garden rake with its hard tines excels at quickly spreading a mound of mulch dumped from your wheelbarrow.
Something in the garden always seems to need pruning, so “Real Gardeners Always Wear Their Pruners” needs to be emblazoned on your T-shirt. Any time I wander out into the garden for a few minutes and neglect to hook my pruners to my belt I always regret it. The best pruners have bypass blades, rather than the anvil type, and the more expensive the pruner, the sooner you will lose it. I prefer ones with red or orange handles so I have a chance of spotting them when they’re lying on the ground, but some red duct tape will work if yours have green handles.
Hand pruners are good for twigs up to about finger-size, but beyond that you’ll need loppers. Depending on their size, loppers can handle limbs up to two or even three inches in diameter. It’s tempting to buy the biggest one, but remember that it might be difficult to wedge it into the space where you’re cutting.
For some pruning jobs, a saw is better. (I don’t own a chain saw, so I won’t be talking about those.) A bow saw can cut through some sizeable branches if you have the time and want to burn a few calories, but can also be difficult to get into tight spaces. In that situation, you’ll need a pruning saw, with a curved blade and teeth that cut on the pull stroke. Models with a longer blade cut more quickly; smaller models are sometimes foldable and can fit into your pocket or a holster.
And what gardener doesn’t have his/her favorite weeder? Or perhaps, a stockpile of them. Like the weeds themselves, new and better weeders are always turning up. Someone on television or in a pop-up ad will inevitably be offering the new “WonderWeeder—instantly pops weeds out of the ground, no stooping or bending!” Yeah, right. Probably 90 percent of your weeding could be taken care of with an old screwdriver or a discarded kitchen knife, but you just wouldn’t feel like a serious gardener, would you? So, one very versatile tool I have found is the Hori-Hori knife, sometimes sold as the Gardener’s Friend. The six-inch blade is serrated on one edge and can also make small cuts on roots, etc. The blade is sturdy enough to get down into the soil and dig out taproots of dandelions. A totally different type of weeder could be considered a mini-hoe, with a small triangular blade on a fifteen-inch handle. (If you Google mini-hoe, or mini-cultivator, you’ll end up with power equipment, however.) Regardless of what it’s really called, this thingy is good for scraping under small, shallow-rooted weeds like winter cress.
And now that we’re approaching the depths of winter, it’s a good time to go out to your shed, knock the dirt off your tools and give them a good cleaning, sharpening, etc. You’ll probably see favorites that you’ve had for decades; others, you might wonder, ”Why did I buy this?!”
But throw anything away, and next week you’ll need it.
