November/December 1974
By Edgar B. Brooks
a mid-winter evening project... make it now for use next summer!
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The gadget you see in the photo is an attachment for a wheel hoe. Bulgarian settlers—good gardeners that they were—introduced it into our Montana valley, and it's been helping us keep the weeds down ever since.
A blacksmith can make the device from a piece of leaf spring by bending the upper two-thirds as shown and then hammering and sharpening a six-to-eight-inch section and welding it to form the bottom of the triangle.
Although the blade is sharpened, the tool really works with a kind of pulling action. The knife's corners will hook weeds out from next to the plants you want to save without injuring their roots. The device runs so shallow that small crop plants are seldom covered with dirt. In short, with this gadget on the job, hand weeding is almost eliminated.
I made a one-horse cultivator on the same principle. It was very light, and—with the help of a slow-moving horse—I could slide the blade in and out of a row and catch the weeds without disturbing the roots of the corn I was cultivating.
This is a very simple yet very effective implement . . . a real laborsaver for the homestead.
