Every spare moment I have is spent in the garden. Often I get home from town, work or an event and it's straight into the garden. Soon I realize I'm weeding and wiping dirt all over my good clothes. It's really hard to stay out of the garden, and I truly spend days out there. Blogging moves to the very back burner, behind jumping in the ocean to clean the garden muck off me or taking our dog for a walk. Summer's busy enough with all the events that come with it, that every spare moment needs to be seized for gardening and working outdoors.
Luckily this year I have a very special tool helping me make the absolute most out of my sparse gardening time, this year I have a Hoss Wheel Hoe.
I have wanted a Hoss Wheel Hoe for a really long time now, ever since I realized that my garden would likely never be any smaller than it was, and would very, very likely only grow over the years. I'm not going to lie, it's true that growing a well maintained garden requires many hours of hard work. Weeding is quite likely the greatest task after planting, which takes considerable time in itself. Cultivation, row and drill forming and weeding, if required, need to be done before any plants or seeds can be put in the ground. Thankfully the wheel hoe can shave considerable time off all these tasks, and did for us.
Fresh out of the box, I received my wheel hoe in February then daydreamed about using it while the snow melted.
A couple of years ago we decided we were done with tilling. We had both grown up with the consensus being that planting a garden started with the routine of tilling your garden, every year. Not just the first year when you were breaking ground for a garden, every single year. We did this for several years. Then when we started to get into practicing organic gardening methods, we felt compelled to incorporate no-till gardening into our bag of tricks. With our hopelessly clay soil, no matter how much manure, seaweed and compost we add, this was easier said than done. That initial shallow cultivation and row forming had to be done with a hoe and without my forever hard working boyfriend's help, I would never have been able to plant the garden myself. Swinging the hoe into ground that could be as hard as concrete to cultivate the soil and form rows was a really tough job, and took an awfully long time, especially with all the breaks a person would have to take. We were determined though, that things would get better every year with the addition of more and more manure, compost and seaweed.
Things did get better, when we received our Hoss Wheel Hoe.
With the wheel hoe we got three separate attachments; the three tined cultivator that comes with the wheel hoe (a harrow like attachment), left and right plows (sold separately) and a weeding attachment (also sold separately) . They are easily attached and unattached to the wheel hoe using only a wrench, and can be changed in a matter of minutes.
All three have proved to be invaluable. I cultivated the soil, formed the rows or drills and planted almost the entire garden by myself with the help of my wheel hoe. The left and right plows can be put on the wheel hoe like this:
With the two plows arranged this way, I dug down and turned over the soil for perfect shallow cultivation. The plows dug down to a depth of almost a whole foot, turning the soil over itself making it really loose and workable.
Just a quick note here; we form rows, drills and hills in our garden due to it's poor drainage abilities. You may plant your garden on the flat if drainage isn't a problem, planting on the flat should reduce the need for watering in dry garden beds, as the raised soil dries out much quicker than flat soil. If my soil ever behaves properly, I'll be planting more on the flat in the future.
Then I used the harrow attachment to loosen the soil up even more, breaking down any clumps into loose soil. Both the plows and harrow attachment dig up any weeds that are in the way under their root level, allowing you to remove the entire weed, roots and all.
I just went back over the soil I had worked, scooping up any weeds that were unearthed and collecting them in a bucket to compost. You can really run the harrow over the garden as much as you want. It cultivates at a shallow enough level to keep the soil undisturbed underneath while still fluffing up the soil enough to make it easily workable.
Running the harrow over the soil before planting.
Digging in, the wheel hoe makes light work of cultivating soil.
Once I was content with how much I had cultivated the soil, it was a simple as putting the plows back on the wheel hoe, this time like this:
With the plows like this, they work perfecting for forming the rows.
After that, all that's left is planting.
Seriously, that's how easy it was to plant my garden this year. Normally, I'm swamped with trying to get it in. Normally, I try and do as much of the row forming as possible by myself before asking my extremely helpful boyfriend to swoop in and save me from hoeing hell.
Normally, it's a ton of work that I struggle to get done.
The garden the Hoss Wheel Hoe planted.
Now, I'm extremely proud of myself for planting the garden almost entirely on my own. Now, I have extra gardening time to take on way more work than I can handle, elsewhere. Now, I've made it my own personal mission to eradicate every weed that dares grow in my garden with the help of my weeding attachment for the wheel hoe. Now, I take the wheel hoe up and down the aisles almost every day to keep the aisles completely free of weeds and now, I have already had more time this year to enjoy and appreciate my garden.
The oscillating hoe attachment, a blade that digs in underneath roots of weeds, uprooting them for easy retrieval. On really hot days I was able to let the weeds die in the rows without having to retrieve them, if it's wet or overcast it' s best to collect them or they may have a chance to re-root.
Digging in, the oscillating hoe weeding attachment digging down to up-root pesky weeds. We planned the garden so most of the rows have enough spacing in between to run the weeding attachment between, for the rows that are too tight for it to fit, I use the three tined cultivator instead as it also works great for weeding.
If you're putting in any considerable sized garden, the wheel hoe is a life saver. Along with gardening every year comes a constant back ache from bending, crouching, kneeling, pulling, pushing and hoeing. If you're like me, you work through this constant backache, almost forgetting about it until standing up straight for the first time in an hour. Out of all the things the wheel hoe has saved me like; time and sanity, the lack of a backache has been one of the greatest awards. Mind you, I'm young and can work through a backache, for the older gardener (or injured) the wheel hoe could make gardening a possibility again, or just take the burden off of a big job.
For the market gardener, the wheel hoe will pay for itself. I would label myself as a grow-all-my-own-food-for-hopefully-the-entire-year gardener, and if you would also label yourself accordingly the wheel hoe will be completely invaluable.
My Hoss Wheel Hoe has a new permanent place in my garden as my most used, most valued tool.
Check out Hoss Wheel Hoes for yourself at www.hosstools.com (Link in Blue)
My boyfriend running the harrow attachment up and down this part of the garden to loosen and shallowly cultivate the soil before planting.
Things did get better, when we received our Hoss Wheel Hoe.
The base of the wheel hoe set up with the three tined cultivator, harrow like, attachment.
With the wheel hoe we got three separate attachments; the three tined cultivator that comes with the wheel hoe (a harrow like attachment), left and right plows (sold separately) and a weeding attachment (also sold separately) . They are easily attached and unattached to the wheel hoe using only a wrench, and can be changed in a matter of minutes.
All three have proved to be invaluable. I cultivated the soil, formed the rows or drills and planted almost the entire garden by myself with the help of my wheel hoe. The left and right plows can be put on the wheel hoe like this:
With the two plows arranged this way, I dug down and turned over the soil for perfect shallow cultivation. The plows dug down to a depth of almost a whole foot, turning the soil over itself making it really loose and workable.
Just a quick note here; we form rows, drills and hills in our garden due to it's poor drainage abilities. You may plant your garden on the flat if drainage isn't a problem, planting on the flat should reduce the need for watering in dry garden beds, as the raised soil dries out much quicker than flat soil. If my soil ever behaves properly, I'll be planting more on the flat in the future.
Then I used the harrow attachment to loosen the soil up even more, breaking down any clumps into loose soil. Both the plows and harrow attachment dig up any weeds that are in the way under their root level, allowing you to remove the entire weed, roots and all.
I just went back over the soil I had worked, scooping up any weeds that were unearthed and collecting them in a bucket to compost. You can really run the harrow over the garden as much as you want. It cultivates at a shallow enough level to keep the soil undisturbed underneath while still fluffing up the soil enough to make it easily workable.
Running the harrow over the soil before planting.
Digging in, the wheel hoe makes light work of cultivating soil.
Once I was content with how much I had cultivated the soil, it was a simple as putting the plows back on the wheel hoe, this time like this:
With the plows like this, they work perfecting for forming the rows.
Freshly formed mini row, formed with the two plow attachments, ready for planting some extra carrots.
I easily formed all these rows myself using the wheel hoe. No string lines, I eyeballed the whole thing, and managed to get things quite straight in substantially better time than using a hoe.
Normally, it's a ton of work that I struggle to get done.
The garden the Hoss Wheel Hoe planted.
Now, I'm extremely proud of myself for planting the garden almost entirely on my own. Now, I have extra gardening time to take on way more work than I can handle, elsewhere. Now, I've made it my own personal mission to eradicate every weed that dares grow in my garden with the help of my weeding attachment for the wheel hoe. Now, I take the wheel hoe up and down the aisles almost every day to keep the aisles completely free of weeds and now, I have already had more time this year to enjoy and appreciate my garden.
The oscillating hoe attachment, a blade that digs in underneath roots of weeds, uprooting them for easy retrieval. On really hot days I was able to let the weeds die in the rows without having to retrieve them, if it's wet or overcast it' s best to collect them or they may have a chance to re-root.
Digging in, the oscillating hoe weeding attachment digging down to up-root pesky weeds. We planned the garden so most of the rows have enough spacing in between to run the weeding attachment between, for the rows that are too tight for it to fit, I use the three tined cultivator instead as it also works great for weeding.
If you're putting in any considerable sized garden, the wheel hoe is a life saver. Along with gardening every year comes a constant back ache from bending, crouching, kneeling, pulling, pushing and hoeing. If you're like me, you work through this constant backache, almost forgetting about it until standing up straight for the first time in an hour. Out of all the things the wheel hoe has saved me like; time and sanity, the lack of a backache has been one of the greatest awards. Mind you, I'm young and can work through a backache, for the older gardener (or injured) the wheel hoe could make gardening a possibility again, or just take the burden off of a big job.
My Hoss Wheel Hoe has a new permanent place in my garden as my most used, most valued tool.
Check out Hoss Wheel Hoes for yourself at www.hosstools.com (Link in Blue)
