Hand Tools, Seeds, and Supplies
(Page 3 of 10)
April/May 1998
By John Vivian
Have you longed for years for one of those elegant Felco anvil-blade pruners — the kind that has red handles, massive Swiss-steel blades, and a flat steel coil spring behind the hinge and that comes in both right and left-handed versions — but couldn't justify the $40 price? Me too.
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Your pocketbook may be pleased to note that Felco's patents have run out — on pruners and their folding-blade pruning saw as well — and admitted direct copies are coming to market. Look for copies in your garden catalogs.
Hoes
Most commonly available garden hoes have fairly large blades and are either too flimsy for serious work or too heavy, clumsy, and shallowly angled for light surface-hoeing in loose organic soil. The typical blade shape and socket configuration is a hybrid of the traditional heavy-bladed cotton hoe designed to chop weeds out of hard Georgia clay and the mason's hoe — that in its purest form sports a shallow-angled blade of thick steel with a hole in each fluke for easier flow through a barrow of wet concrete. Such a generic hoe is fine for general use. More refined designs have been developed for specialized applications over the millennia.
For years, I've used an onion hoe to nip out young weeds. This blade was developed to get between close-set onions, so it is narrow and bent sharply back from the handle line. It makes a shallow, pulling cut that slices off weed stems just under the soil line. My newest is an exclusive offer ing of Lehman's non-electric, good neighbor heritage catalog out of the Amish country around Kidron, Ohio. Designed by an Amish saw maker and gardener, the hoe's two-inch-high blade comes in five, six, and seven-inch widths, and is sharpened on the bottom edge and both sides. The wide edge is bent back from the handle line at a 70° angle so it will cut a shallow, weed-removing slice off the soil's surface. The blade is light enough that it can be held vertically with an easy grip so the narrow side-edges can get in between closely-set plants. The Swedish saw-steel blade retains a cutting edge and is easily sharpened during work with a scythe, wetstone, or file. I carry a Schrade Honesteel, a metal-ceramic sharpener that comes in a belt sheath.
New last year was the colinear hoe, a variation on the narrow-bladed onion hoe. This is one of several European-style tools designed by master gardener and author Eliot Coleman and made by the Swiss tool manufacturer REAL (pronounced Ray'AL). Eliot extended the handle and revised the blade angle of his colinear hoe so that a gardener of normal modern height could weed the garden without stooping. Traditional tool handle lengths hark back to the 1900s, when Americans were shorter in stature. Colinear is a two-dollar word meaning that the blade cuts almost parallel to the soil surface, describing the same path along the soil line as the gardener's arm motion. The handle is sixty inches long and the thin, seven-inch-wide blade of high-tempered spring steel can be replaced when it wears out. You have to grind off a pair of rivets; replacement blades come with new rivets that need to be peened flat to affix the new blade to the handle ferrule. The colinear hoe is a rarity: an innovative, top quality tool sold at a reasonable price, around $30.
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