ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 15, 1996 TAG: 9602150020
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Hoein' & Growin'
SOURCE: SARA THORNE-THOMSEN
Now is a good time to assemble your garden tools and contemplate what you have. Do you need a new trowel or a new pair of gloves? Is it time to invest in a sturdy English spade or a dibble? It is important for the gardener to invest in good tools, because every spade or shovel, trowel or dibble, is a gardener's valuable assistant. The difference between a good tool and a poor one is like the difference between a Rolls Royce and a Ford Pinto.
Every gardener needs a pair of gloves to protect the hands from the traumas of digging. Experienced gardeners will tell you that it takes far more time for a blistered hand to heal than it does to mend a broken spade shaft.
Gloves do not need to be expensive to protect the hands and give good service. Dot gloves, the ones with the little plastic nubs on the working surface, are cheap enough to throw away when worn out and durable enough to take considerable punishment.
Much more expensive, but also more durable and environmentally sound, are leather gloves. If they are not abused (used, for instance, to protect the hand when screening soil or accidentally nipped while pruning) and properly treated with neat's-foot oil to keep them supple when exposed to water, they will last for years, even with hard use. Be aware, however, that garden gloves are close kin to umbrellas. If you tend to mislay umbrellas, stick with the less expensive gloves.
Cheap, however, is not a virtue in a shovel, a spade or a hoe. Our clay soil and the stones winter seems to heave up to a point just inches beneath the surface can cause the blade of a cheap shovel to bend in short order. When buying a new shovel, don't settle for a die-cast blade. The blade should be made of forged steel with a high carbon content. Don't be fooled by the term "drop-forged" used by some companies to describe their tools; it's another term for die-cast.
In a fine spade, shovel or hoe, the blade and socket (by which the blade is attached to the handle) will be made of a single piece, not two pieces welded together. The socket (or long steel straps) will be riveted through the shaft to make a firm connection. The common tang-and-ferrule connection (a long projecting metal strip, like a tongue, inserted into a metal sleeve on the end of the handle) is far less strong; many gardeners can show you a veritable rogue's gallery of hoes whose tangs have pulled right out of the ferrules during an afternoon of energetic hoeing.
Tool quality, however, is not the only issue here. There remains the question of which is the better tool, a square-ended spade or a pointed-bladed shovel. Serious gardeners are passionately committed to one or the other.
The spade originated in England, where the best ones are still made, so it has gardening cachet superior to that of its American cousin, the shovel. A spade is unquestionably the best tool to use when double-digging or creating a straight row. The square end makes neat cuts that are particularly satisfying as you dig down the row. With its square end and almost flat shape, the spade's blade works as an edging tool for making those neat edges characteristic of a well-tended garden, and a cutting tool for removing modest amounts of turf to widen a garden bed. Because it tends to be made of better steel, a spade holds a sharp edge longer than a shovel.
On the other hand, a good American shovel, with its dish-shaped blade mounted at an angle to the shaft, is hard to beat when you want to shift earth. The sharp point helps to penetrate stiffer soil, a compacted surface or a mass of roots. Because the shovel is made to lift and turn, rather than simply to cut, it is more versatile than a spade.
Some argue that a shovel is better than a spade because it weighs less. But studies have shown that within a certain range of tolerance, the body experiences no more fatigue from using a heavy shovel or spade than from using a light one. Although a slightly heavier tool breaks the ground more easily, it is important to pick a shovel or spade that feels comfortable to you and that you think will meet your needs.
For close-in work, such as planting and transplanting seedlings, a trowel is a must-have tool. Weakness in a trowel's construction is almost always at the place where the blade attaches to the shaft. A trowel should not be used dig out a large stone. Sometimes, after a long afternoon of setting out transplants, it just seems more expedient to use the trowel in hand to pry out what is surely only a small stone. Snap! And a lesson learned. Here, one-piece construction is desirable, because it resists the strong bending forces the trowel encounters when used to pry out stubborn pieces of rock or break up a hard lump of clay. Molded aluminum and carbon-steel trowels are very durable.
On the other hand, a dibble, which resembles a long metal finger attached to a stout wooden handle, is virtually indestructible. It is designed for the lightest of garden digging - poking holes in soil for transplants. If you use your finger or thumb to make holes for seedlings, you might want to try a dibble. It saves wear and tear on the fingers, as well as the gloves you are, of course, wearing.
LENGTH: Medium: 87 linesby CNB