So you've made your best garden plant seed picks and actually placed your order on time this year.
You will need to contact the rental shop to get on their list of rotor-tiller renters and hope that the weather cooperates and that there are no problems with their tillers that will necessitate a repair on your tilling day.
Of all the things you will need to do to get ready for a successful gardening season, preparing the soil for planting is an unavoidable must do task.
If you are like most people, using a rotor-tiller is as pleasurable as hiking on a superhighway.
An alternative to the noise, smell and mechanical stress of rotor-tilling is using a broad fork.
- Otherwise known as a broadfork (written as one word) a U-bar or a grelinette.
Not all broad forks are created equal and each has their own place in the world of gardening tools.
One broadfork you will want to check out when learning about broad fork gardening is the WayCoolTools broad fork. It is surprisingly light despite being made entirely of tempered aircraft quality alloy steel, yet strong enough to remove large stones and penetrate heavy, compacted soil. It has the added benefit of enabling you to more finely cultivate your garden soil for planting by chopping and tilthing the soil.
To use a broad fork rock the two handles back and forth while applying pressure with one or both feet on the cross bar above the digging blades.
As you penetrate the soil, pull back on the handles to loosen the soil.
If needed you can use the broad fork with an up and down chopping motion to break up larger clods of soil.
The amount of time to produce finished planting beds is around a minute per foot in heavily compacted soil. With that in mind you could dig a 30 foot long planting bed in about a half hour.
If you were to work an hour a day with our 5 tine broad fork, in the course of a work week you will have made ready over 200 square feet of gardening space.
Did you know that you can actually dig deeper than a rototiller with a broadfork without creating the hard pan that rotor-tillers cause?
For more information on these broad forks see www.waycooltools.com
No comments:
Post a Comment