Posts Tagged ‘broadfork’

Gulland Forge Broadfork - Now Available from CobraHead

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

Noel and the Gulland Forge Broadfork

Here’s me showing off my Gulland Forge Broadfork. CobraHead is pleased to announce that we are now selling this tool. It’s both a beautiful and functional tool, hand made by blacksmith Larry Cooper.

A broadfork is a tool that many vegetable growers depend on. The broadfork is used to break open, loosen, and aerate the soil of beds and garden plots, and prepare the ground for planting. It is not used as a tool to open up virgin hard packed soil that has not been cultivated previously. Not every gardener needs a broadfork, but if you’re serious about growing vegetables, this tool can make your life a lot easier.

The broadfork can also be used to assist harvesting of crops like potatoes and carrots. I use it as a weeding tool in my beds if they ever get overgrown It opens up a large area quickly and easily.

I was introduced to Larry Cooper’s Gulland Forge broadfork in April of 2010. I purchased one on the recommendation of a mutual acquaintance and I got to know Larry, who at the time was living in Wisconsin. The very first time I used the fork, I knew it was a special tool and I wrote about it here. And now we are selling it and we could not be happier.

Using the broadfork is physical, it is a large hand tool, but it is not difficult or taxing even for older and smaller people. I can completely loosen up the soil in one of my five foot by 20 foot raised beds in about 20 to 30 minutes.

A big advantage of a broadfork is that it does very little damage to the soil structure. It softens the soil without churning it and allows for deep penetration of roots.

The specific advantages of the Gulland Forge broadfork include its curved tines, which make it easier to work the tool into the ground than a broadfork with straight or kinked tines. It is lighter in weight than most broadforks. It weighs just over 14 pounds. And it is made to be easily repaired should anything ever break. It’s designed to be a lifetime tool.

If you have interest in a broadfork, do your shopping. When you’re ready for a Gulland Forge Broadfork, you can buy it here.

 

 

 

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Cleaning an Overgrown Garden Bed — Video!

Monday, June 27th, 2011

Noel and I made another video last week demonstrating how he uses a few different tools to help him clean out a totally overgrown, weedy garden bed. As you can see in the video, a few of the beds in the vegetable garden have grown out of control. The daunting task of clearing the beds was made quite a lot easier with the use of proper hand tools.

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Another Battle in the Everlasting War on Weeds

Monday, May 9th, 2011

Four Year Old Strawberry Bed

My garden is an experiment to prove to myself that it’s possible to maintain a large organic vegetable growing area using all hand labor and with a minimum of outside inputs. Weed control is the toughest part, and not having or taking enough time to do a good job of preventative weeding often leaves me with some labor intensive weeding chores.

This partly weeded bed was planted with strawberries in 2007. I normally clean out the berry beds and move any young berry plants into a new bed after three years, but that didn’t happen. As old strawberry beds are the hardest of all to weed, and get my least attention, this four year old bed was mainly a mix of dandelion, quack grass, creeping charlie, and chickweed. I did unearth a few dozen young berry plants that were saved to be to be transplanted into a new bed.

To make weeding the bed as complete and as painless as possible, I first used the broadfork to break the soil. It’s much faster and easier than trying to use a garden fork. It penetrates deeper and moves a lot of soil with each bite. After loosening the roots with the broadfork, it was down to my hands and knees to pull out the loosened weeds with my CobraHead Weeder. I occasionally had to use the border fork to extract dandelion taproots that hadn’t been freed by the broadfork.

Ready for Planting

I used the kama to clean the grass edge border. I re-shaped the flattened bed using a steel rake, my trusty old five-tined cultivating hoe, and a scoop shovel. This ready to plant bed represents about six hours work and is definitely the physically hardest thing I will have to do in the garden, this year.

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