Robin's Outdoors

When I was planning my move from market farming to full-time writing, I wondered what tools I’d no longer have a use for as a homesteader. The intensively planted garden covered an acre. It’s now a half-acre and has wider paths. I won’t be doing a lot of succession planting. I’m not concerned that the broccoli I cut yesterday won’t be replaced with seedlings today. A lot has changed yet stayed the same.

As it turns out, I still need most of my tools. The amount of time I use them has changed. I no longer need three types of hoes. A stirrup hoe will quickly and efficiently dislodge small weeds, leaving them on top of the soil to dry out in the sun. The steel blade turns on the base, allowing me to work around plants and in small spaces. Both sides of the blade are sharp, so the hoe slices through soil and plants when you push it away from you and pull it toward you. I can’t chop with a stirrup hoe, and sometimes stubborn weeds that I’ve allowed to grow too long need a good whack with a plain, old-fashioned hoe. I’ll be keeping that one.

The wheel hoe, much-loved, well used, and holding up so well it almost looks brand new after eight years of heavy use, sits in the garden shed unused so far this year. I’m not ready to part with it just yet. The pruners are getting more use than ever. Now that there’s more time to carefully prune the raspberry canes, my pruners are kept close at hand. I don’t like to prune the raspberries, so I do a few feet here and there before moving on to something more enjoyable. I use bypass pruners to be sure I get a clean cut, especially on the tomato plants.

The Earthway Garden Seeder is staying. On freshly tilled soil, the seeder makes the tiny trench, drops in the seeds with appropriate spacing and covers the seeds with soil. That beats doing it all by hand. It’s easy to overplant seeds by spacing them too closely. It takes only a few minutes to plant a half pound of beans, peas or corn. My seeder has spent so many summers in the sun that the red hopper is now an unattractive shade of pink, but it still does a great job. The garden knife is staying in my bucket of tools. It slices through plastic to open bags of compost, cuts twine with its serrated edge, slices deep weed roots easily and makes a neat, small, deep hole. I’ve discovered that a garden knife is a good replacement for a narrow trowel.

I’m keeping the hand tiller, a tool that never entered the “keep or go” debate. The hand tiller breaks up root clumps from last year’s plants, loosens soil and is perfect for removing small rocks from the garden. The soil falls through the tines while you’re wiggling the rock around to loosen it before picking it up. You don’t need a lot of hand or arm strength to use the hand tiller. It’s a small tool that looks a lot like a clam rake. You don’t have to sink it into the soil all at once.

Two gallon sprayers are stored at the back of the garden shed. A gallon of foliar spray, pesticide for insects and herbicide for plants is enough. I was able to piece together a pump from one sprayer, nozzle from another and tuck away tanks as spare parts to use later. I’m keeping three sprayers. I don’t want to chance not thoroughly cleaning out an herbicide sprayer and killing a few plants at the beginning of a foliar feed. I will probably cut back to two tanks. The foliar feeding spray smells of molasses and the herbicide smells of citrus. It would be hard to mistake one for the other and easy to detect if I didn’t get all the liquid out of the hose. I’m keeping one sprayer for the garden hose. It has eight settings from mist to jet. If I don’t take sprayers off the hose to change them I won’t lose them. There used were sprayers on each of four hoses and each hose has multiple sprayers.

Downsizing the garden to a family garden has been interesting and fun. I have a new enthusiasm this year and wasn’t stressed by the cold, wet start of June. It’s a good feeling.

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