Selfsufficientish.com

so another user (noodles) asked for some advice about an Azada ad this got me wandering....

does everybody have a favourite gardening tool? Mine is my fork/mattock, it's easy and comfortable to use... I even look forward to being able to use it

My fork - just a regular garden fork, it get's used the most and (having broken 3 in 2 years) this one is really hard wearing and heavy.

Santa brought me a nice wooden handled sturdy trowel, I love that too

My fork too! It's a lady fork - because I'm too weak and feeble to use a grown up one

Quite seriously it changed overnight the amount of gardening I can do - the big ones knackered me really quickly. So now I've got a lady spade too - although my OH seems to have taken a liking to that

My favourite tool echos my favourite hobby, eating. The next few uses I found for it were in DIY but recently I discovered how useful it is in the garden as well. What is it? A round bladed kitchen knife!

Not only does it butter your bread and ice your cakes, it's also useful for stripping wallpaper and paint, polyfilla-ing small holes, replacing a screwdriver, opening paint tins, and levering off what ever needs levering off.

The other day I discovered it is also perfect for digging weeds out from between patio slabs and for pricking out seedlings, scraping mud and gunk off what ever needs mud and gunk scraped off and even cutting out small patches of turf.

Yup, round bladed kitchen knife, you can't beat it.

Zoe

Wooden handled french penknife
But depends what I'm doing

now i have to look up 'mattock' and 'azada'

long handled bilhook
bread knife i use for cropping
cornish fork (theyr just not the same when they have a T bit on the end)
scythe (better than a lawnmower any day)

The magic swoe - I couldn't use any other form of hoe now as I've been using one for so long.

Nine years ago, after a bad back had laid me low, Santa brought me a stainless steel spade.....

NO-ONE is allowed to touch it!

MW

Well i bought 2 of those Chillington Hoes (Azadas), i bought the Heavy Duty Hoe and the Ridging Hoe for making all my seed trenches and potato ridges and i find them invalueable and cant understand why we all havent got them especially with the build of the Chillington ones which are the ones i got.
BUT ! On that website http://www.chillingtonhoes.com i noticed this little baby http://www.chillingtonhoes.com/grass.html The Martindale Grass Slasher and i bought one recently. Now what a tool and there is something satisfying about chopping your weeds down with this, gets rid of any stress i can tell you, and saves having to get all tooled up with the protective gear when useing the strimmer or bushcutter in my case.

I have used this tool around my electric fencing and along the drives as the weeds and grass have shot up in the last week or so due the rain here, they sell it with a small file over here to keep it sharp, but for you lot you can buy it straight from the makers who are in the westmidlands i think. All the info appears on that website anyway.

we have a really good hoe - I'm not sure what make it is - we inherited it, but it is part of a set of tools with detachable heads/handles - the handle broke a while back and we fixed the hoe onto a new wooden handle.. its just so good, serated edge, perfect angle.. you can rip through weeds in no time.

everyone should have a really good hoe.

Probably either my Azada (allotment would still be mostly brambles and couch without it) or my Opinel No.10 knife, which has so many different uses (admittedly all involving cutting things).

Just broke the handle on my favourite fork though.

My favortite tool I inherited from my granfather in law. Its got so many uses, I be lost without it - but I'm always stuck for they call it ! Best described as a three 'fingered' fork that form a craw with an extra long handle - suggestions in a hat please :-)

Yes i think i have seen one of those claw forks, but what do you use it for??

Many uses - breaking up the soil early spring prior to hoeing, grubing up couch grass, brambles any weeds you normally fight with :-).

Its also great when applying a top dressing, it turns the soil over gentler than a hoe - well when 'ham fisted' me does it !

You may laugh at this one, it has a long handle (6'), when the plum tree's fruit in front of my house I use it to pull the branches down for picking :-)

By the way why is it that they only seem to fruit every 3-4 years - is it cause they are ornamental, old or just cause there owned by the council !!

My favourite tool is my Canterbury fork from Chillington - 4ft sturdy handle 3 pronged right angled head - has been so handy in attempting to deal with the couch grass and brambles on my plot, weeding, cultivating... I have an azada as well and very rarely use my conventional spade or fork.