A Wonderful Garden Weeding Tool

Okay, before I get to the rest of this post - yesterday's harvest resulted in enough yummy fresh peas to make five servings.  If I hadn't munched some it probably would have been six.  This was from a very full 7' x 4' raised bed.  I'm not going to do the rant on a different part of gardening because I'm sure you can do the math yourself.

Now to the point of this post. 

I love this tool.  It's called a stirrup hoe. It turns what would be an hour of more of hand weeding into 15 to 20 minutes, if that.  Last year I had forgotten that I had this wonderful tool in the garden shed.  I remembered at the end of garden season.  Yup, another palm to forehead moment.  Especially when I realized how much it would have helped me when I was weeding Dad's gardens.  In particular, the extended rock garden.

Now I do a lot of things to keep weeds from popping up because I hate weeding.  The need to weed is part of any garden so I truly love any tool that makes that weeding go faster.  And this tool does that.  Note - I hate regular hoes.

This hoe goes below the surface and cut/digs out weed roots.  And it doesn't move the soil itself very much.  After I run it through the bed it's only a matter of minutes worth of effort to grab the weeds and toss them out of the garden bed.

There is one problem though.  I'm working in tight spaces.  When I use this hoe I'm standing up, which is wonderful for my back, but not so wonderful for my aim.  As a result, I only tend to use this hoe when the weeds have gotten really bad (which is how I forgot about it). 

So this weekend I'm going to look for another one while I'm at the flea market.  I got this one as part of a bulk buy at an auction in better times.  If I can find another one, I'm going to turn it into a hand tool.  Then I'll have the best of both worlds for handling the weeds.

Fingers crossed for finding another one I can afford.  I hope your weeding is at a minimum.