Tools and tasks
This chapter is about making a garden without expensive gear and about how gardening with manual labor is neither exhausting nor difficult. It is rather easy, however, to fool a novice into believing he or she needs a powerful tiller. If you purchase any kind of shovel or spade and an ordinary hoe and try working some hard soil with these tools exactly as they came from the store, digging will instantly seem the most exhausting thing a person ever tried to do. You will conclude that anyone who can make a ditch with a shovel has to be the strongest man that ever walked the earth. Try chopping weeds with that new hoe and after two minutes you'll be dripping buckets of sweat, tired out for the rest of the day.
The reason: When you bring them home from the store, the tools are never sharp. Worse, most gardeners never properly sharpen their tools after buying them. I know this for a fact. Once a year, in spring, I teach a veggie gardening course, and for one session I ask everyone to bring in their hoes and shovels and we sharpen them. This turns out to be the second-most-popular thing that happens in my class. (The event participants think is the most useful is the morning spent in my own garden, when I demonstrate how to prepare a raised bed with those tools and how to sow seeds so they'll come up.)
basic three and a file lo handle * garden up to a quarter acre (1,000 square meters) in size, it you are minimally fit (I said "minimally fit"; 1 did nor say male, nor did I say huge),
- rmIs arc essential: an ordinary combination shovel, a common |,0r ly (our tools arc ^ (25 ^ 30-centimerer) mcral fi,c (J
- EtilU ^ << rT r not fi,(rll n « I, want to git someone else to work the earth for yaii t|
- Cd * r - «r*unabfe
ht, you'll probably have ro consider the second-rate practtce of mulch g,r dening. I do not recommend permanent mulching unless, because of infirrTlity there is no choice.
Please do nor buy cheap discount store tools. If you are what Australian c airskint;(broke), you will do better pawing through secondhand shops until you find good ones. Where can you find quality new tools? I suggest a visit to a commercial hardware store, landscapers or nursery supply company, or con. tractors supply store and inspcct what they sell ro tradespeople. pcopjc working with such tools all day long can't afford to be resharpening one every half hour, breaking one ever)' other day, or wearing them out every fcvv months. Quality tools aren't cheap, but rhey work out to be the least costly m the long run.
On the other hand, in some mail-order catalogs you'll ttnd tools, supposed! r of extraordinary quality, offered at extraordinary prices. These status symbols arc usually no more effective or long-lasting than the ordinary tradespersons
The shovel
There are different lands of shovels and spades, each designed for a differenr rasL Industrial hardware stores and landscapers' have makers' catalogs on hand showing each design, weight, and si2c. 1 suggest you ask to study the cat- ! - and take your time with this.
to another—.'fc'5 ^ " m0Ve PilcS °floosc ™tenai from one place k j - example, to fill a wheelbarrow with sand or small gravel that
- broads '' P mattriaL Blad« these kinds of shovel, '
- 2 r; hr0';o,d a ,or'* ^ ™st001 ,s upper body an i ,1 ' c " m3tCnnl with thc srrength ofrhc ar"U tolled over top (,„ t .J™ " °Ut 3 lar«e measure, so the blade rarely hai»
<kg into the earth Jl " ^ pr"sinSic into Ae earth). It is not easy to ™ Wlth one of these.
The spade, on the other hand, i, de„gned to dig „raieh, down «
and loosen compacted .oil Usually the feot-long only six to eight inches (15 to 20 centimeter») Wlde. w „ Jj^T*» ■nuch weight to push it into the earth I've seen this sort of ihoveI madf ^ 3 short blade, as though for children but I would never buy one wuh a Jess than ten inches (25 cent,meters) long; a foot long „ be« The bl pressed straight down into the earth by one foot, with the gardener applyl the whole weight of the body, so the top edge is rolled over to avoid b™, the foot pressing it into the earth. Spade, are marvelous tooU for loo«™"* soil; of all digging implements they will penetrate harder earth w,rh the \cZ force or weight atop them. The limitation with a ipade ,s that becauseTh" blade is flat and narrow, it is inefficient when it comes to turning over or mov-ing the earth. Spades are best for working compacted new ground for the fo r time, but after that they arc entirely outclassed by the ordinary comb.nat.on shovel (see below).
I own a special long-handled spade, locally called a'plumber', friend." Tim one has a slightly pointed curting edge on a rather narrow and strong slighth curved blade that is as effective at penerraring compacted earth as an ordinary spade, but will move soil better than a flat blade. It is ideal when you're trying to unearth a leaking pipe. I use it only to break new ground. Most of the time it sits unused in the garden shed. But when I have occasion to use it the plumber s friend is my friend, too, because it saves me a lot of work compared to doing that job with a combination shovel.
The combination shovel, as its name implies, docs what both the spade and the shovel do, but in one tool. The blade is a bit wider than a spade, but still narrow enough that it doesn't take an unreasonable amount of weigh« to press it into uncompacted earth. The blade is curved enough that it can pick up loose material and toss it somewhere. Because us design is a compronvse — allowing it to dig firm bur not rock-hard soil and toss loose stuff — it is "Of ideally efficient at either task. When you are buying a combination shovel, nuke sure the top of the blade is rolled over to facilitate pressing down with • sole of the shoe. It should be a long-handled tool so that if the soil u a bit bo ^ ' " f° Pcnctration. you can wiggle the handle as you put most of your
' weight on the blade, standing on it balanced on one foot. Once the
1 ( >•' ■ been inserted, the curve of the shovel allows you to lift a lair amoun'
- T COUNTS |NG WHEN --
- f]ip it over. Bur if you should have a wheelbarrow fij, of earth and eas.> ^ shovcl also allows you to lift rhat ot
- Xd it considerable distances. You can't do this cflJ
riVec>ViClr handled shovels and spades are for people under five feet (,. metersH1- Bending over while work.ng a shovel or spade is exhaust^ ^ „n becomes painfol unless your back .s extreme y strong. Short-h*^ 'lis arc good to take camping or to toss m the trunk to use in an cmergeil And maybe they're good for children. But for regular garden use, there is no way I would ever have one.
Spading forks are designed to act like a spade, but they also rapidly break up soil when they are levered back after being inserted because the earth can pass between the tines. They are easier to push into the earth than a spade. Spading forks work effectively only on naturally loose (sandy) soil. The tool is worse than a spade at picking up soil to flip it over. And the tines will bend when used with enough force to work fairly heavy ground.
In my opinion short-handled spading forks are an instrument of torture, bur I am nearly six feet (1.8 meters) tall.
All things being equal, I recommend the combination shovel.
Sharpening the shovel
It is highly unlikely that any shovel (or hoe) will be sharp when you purchase it. In fact, it will almost certainly be entirely blunt — squared oft'instead of honed into an acute bevel like a chisel's edge. Sadly, as is also the case with knives and a lot of other tools rhat have to be sharp to be effective, the only way you can find out if you purchased a good piece of steel is to sharpen it, use it, and find out how long it stays sharp. One indicator: the slower the stone or file cuts the metal, the better the steel probably is.
Making tool steel inevitably involves compromise. The harder the steel is, the sharper it'll become and the longer it'll stay sharp. Usually. However, the harder the steel is, the more brittle it is and the more likely the edge will # or the blade will snap when twisted or bent. Old-fashioned straight razors^ extremely brittle, made of the hardest possible steel. Axes smack into M 7 ;' ?feat dcal of they must be made of much softer metal or < yd Shatter whe" hitting a knot. Garden implements may encounter ^
and be on the receiving end of a lot of bending stress; they need an intermediate grade of tool-quality steel.
In my opinion, making something of cheap material that only resembles a working tool is dishonest and takes advantage of ignorance. Tool steel is costly to buy and costly to work. I know of no way to tell with reasonable certainty if I'm about to buy a good shovel or a piece of junk, other than to select a brand name used by tradespeople. I also look for a few indications. Is the handle solidly attached; is the tool light and well balanced, yet strong. If it is a combination shovel or spade, is the top of the blade rolled over so you can press hard with your foot without pain. And, of course, you can attempt to sharpen it. If the stone or file cuts the metal rapidly with little pressure applied, it is soft metal that will rapidly get dull with use.
To sharpen a shovel, place it on the edge of a porch or on the earth. Put one foot on the handle, just behind where it sockets into the blade, and press down with enough weight to hold it still while you file it, or do it the easy way — have someone else hold it for you. Then, while leaning over the blade, hold the file so that the angle between the blade and the file is about 15°. Maintain that angle firmly. Do not let the file change its angle. Now stroke the file along the edge, pressing down firmly but not so hard that you lose control of the unchanging angle of the file. If the cutting edge is curved, always start the stroke in the center of the blade and work out toward one side. Do a few strokes from center to one side and then do a few strokes going to the other side from the center. After a few hundred strokes (it may seem an endless task the first time you sharpen a new tool), you will have removed enough metal to produce a chisel-like bevel, and the shovel will have a sharp edge, nearly sharp enough to cut your finger on. If you want the edge to be really sharp, the bevel must have no variations in it, no changes of angle, and the entire cutting edge must have the exact same angle of bevel.
It is not necessary to make a bevel that goes all the way up the rounded sides because when the shovel is cutting its way into the earth, most of the effort of cutting is done within four incUcs (ten centimeters1 of each side ot die center.
As the bevel is being created, a'wire" will form on the opposite side. I"he •wion of filing forms a thin sheet of metal that wraps around the edge of the blade. This wire prevents the edge from being really sharp and .should be
The shovel's bevelled edge. Hoes should not be ground to an angle this acute; 20° is them.
removed. Ir is easy and quick ro do this. Just flip the shovel over and, holding the file at about a 5° angle, make a lew light strokes. Not many, just a few. You want to remove the wire, not make a matching bevel on the back more acute than the one on the front.
A quality shovel will dig all summer and noc get dull unless you blunt the edge striking a good many rocks. It does not take an impossible amount of eflort or weight to push a sharp combination shovel or spade into the soil. A fit woman weighing over 100 pounds (45 kilograms) should be able to manage it just fine. Someone weighing even less can do it in soil that lias been spaded up once and has then received small yearly additions of manure or compost, which keeps the soil loose and friable. Someone who weighs under a hundred pounds can still push in a spade that is a bit narrower than the usual.
I WCre shoPPing for a second-hand shovel I'd take my own file to the alvanon Army thrift store and tell the clerk when I came in that this was »>] I ' had brou?ht ^ <0 test some shovels (and hoes). Then I'd make a few strokes on the edge of any likely-looking tool. The speed at which the file # would reveal everything about the tool except how strongly the handle ««hed. Guts fast: junk. Cuts slow: probably good steel. Stroke a few new sharp file and you'll instantly see the differences.
you don t abuse it, a shovel should be a long-lasting tool, but even <p* wear out. How fast they wear ou[ J ^ much the/ *
tools and tasks
F'gure 3.2: Sharpening a shovel.
used and the nature of the soil they are being used in. If the soil is sandy, then repeatedly pushing the blade into that soil is a bit like rubbing it with sandpa-Pu- gets steadily thinner (and weaker) and eventually will break, i 10 same thing happens to rototiller tines; they'll wear down to nubbins. ) x'Pected life of a shovel that digs a 2,000-square-foot (200-square-nieter) garden several times every year: 10 to 20 years.
J If 1 Nvcre shopping for a used shovel Yd inspect the blade closely for fine cn\-S'^ indication tllar rhe steel has worn too thin. The presence of those rac s indicates the shovels useful life is over.
The file
"Ude °f extremely hard steel, but do get dull with use. Once a file has u («* rusted), it cakes forever to remove much metal with it. Start oat with a new one. ten inches (25 centimeters) long with a so hd handle attached. When filing seems to need more time than it used to take, get another fi]c. They don't "cost much. And keep a light coat of o.l on yours if it'll be sitting around unused for months on end.
How to start a new garden
New gardens are almost always made in a place chat had been growing grasseSi often mixed with other low-growing plants. Grass makes an especially dense network of tough roots, called sod, that holds soil together firmly. If rhe grass grew thickly, the soil will not immediately break up after hand-digging. Ir won't break up until die sod rots. And grass is tough, a survivor. It won't die and rot just because ir has been turned over once; it'll attempt to regrow.so you've got to work to kill it.
In the Deep South of the United States. in most of California, and Down Under, this cask can be done ac any time of year chat the earch is ac the right moisture for digging. In harsher climates, the besc season for this cask is nor spring, when many acquire a passion for gardening, buc ac the end of summer in ancicipacion of nexc spring. Whichever season ic turns ouc to be for you, first mow the grass as close to the ground as possible — scalp ic right down to the growing poincs it doing so won't damage your mowing gear. Mow until you expose pacches of nearly bare soil.
If che clippings are shore, lec them rest in place. If it was such tall grass that you had to cut it with a weed whacker, scythe, or sickle, it would be a good idea to rake the grass up and remove ic co make compost; your shovel won't cur through ic easily. You also done wane co be paying che hourly rental on a walk-behind rotary cultivator that repeatedly gets its tines tangled up.
This done, spread the basic amendments co enrich your soil che first tif - lime(s), complece organic fercilizer, manure and/or compost — in chc amounts recommended in Chapter 2.
No matter which way you choose to do the job, rototill or hand-dig' * when, summers end, autumn, or spring, do it only when the soil moisture«»
j" " the SoiI is t0° dry, che ground will be so hard that che cask will i* * St thrCC nmcs * long. Wait for rain or irrigate first. If you dig wee stf * contains much clay, you'll likely make a lot of hard lumps, called clods. W ^
CSC C'0ds d7 ^ey become almost rock-like and won't break do**
months, maybe not until they've gone through the next winter. It can be extremely difficult to get seeds to come up in cloddy soil, and plants won't gr0w as well in it either. If it is spring, wait until the soil has dried enough to work. If it is autumn, making a few clods is not such a problem as they'll break down over the winter.
The'ready-to-till test." Take a small handful of soil and mold it as firmly as you can into a round ball about the size of a golf ball. Pack it hard. Then, cradling that ball in your palm, press firmly on it with your thumb. If it breaks apart easily and crumbles, the soil is just right to work. If the ball won't crumble, and your thumb merely makes a dent in the ball's gooey side, it is too wet. If the soil would not form a ball that sticks together, it is either too dry or contains no clay. A clayless soil may feel damp in your hand but will not form a ball no matter how firmly you mold it. That means you have a soil that won't form clods no matter what you do, so feel free to work this soil at any time, wet or dry. (You also have a soil that won't hold much moisture, and unless there is a second layer of soil located not too far below the surface that will hold a lot of moisture, this site is going to make a droughty garden that probably won't do well unless you can regularly irrigate it.)
Killing sod by rotary cultivation
The fastest way to kill a grass sod without using herbicides is with a rotodller.
In one afternoon you can change an area of sod into something resembling a ready-to-plant seedbed, with fluffy loose soil that extends down about five
»nches (12 centimeters). I've had much experience with tilling. I have hired men owning large tractors do it for me by the hour; I did my variety trials ground myself using a self-propelled seven-horsepower rotodller. Before that
1 owned a "front-end" tiller. Now that I am old and weak (and wiser). I prefer digging
With a shovel, a somewhat slower approach that requires no gas. makes no noise, and actually takes little more effort (but is spread over more Cltnc) than tilling does.
Rototilling is pleasing when you are in a hurry. Even if you're flush with ^no"ey, 1 suggest, when starring a new garden, that you hire a machine or hire J°meonc wbo owns one to come in and only rotorill on that one occasion. 'I he '1S; rlljng you want to do is own one because you'll get fir better results using a slioVel
Do noc cry co eliminate grass/sod wich a front-end rotot.ller, which wil, pr0ve several runes more exhausting and litt e faster) than doing it by hand. Use only a self-propelled rear-t.ned tiller of at least seven or eight horsep0wer, or hire someone. To estimate what tiller hire will cost, an effective walk-behitld rear end tiller can eliminate about 1,000 square feet (90 square meters) of gl-ass per hour, digging to about five inches (12 certnmeters). If the soil is dry or particularly hard, or if the sod is particularly tough, you might double chat estimate. It would take me about 20 hours to dig that much new land by hand the first time, but I would do it to 12 inches (30 centimeters) deep. If },ou sprayed that area first with the herbicide glyphosate and allowed enough time to pass for the sod co die and most of it to rot (four to eight weeks of warm weather, or over wincer if you spray in early autumn), the digging or tilling would go at least twice as fast. (This assumes you are noc gardening strictly organically.)
Here are a few hints for tilling. My instructions may seem unclear, but, believe me, this informacion will make sense as soon as you actually stare.
I am assuming the plot is a rectangle. Make the first pass straight down the center che long way. Why the long way? Because turning around is an efforc and wasces cime; che less often you have to do it, the better. Try hard to hold che firsc pass exacdy scraighc. There will be a drag bar that concrols how deeply che cines cuc. Sec ic so you dig only one inch (2.5 centimeters) below the surface; ocherwise che machine will cend co skip and jump in all directions, Do noc renc a walk-behind ciller that doesn't have a functioning drag bar.
Okay, you've done one pass the long way. Unless this particular soil and sod is softer and more tender than any I've ever met, it will seem to you that almosc nothing has happened. Turn around and make another pass going the opposite direction, exactly down that same row you've already tilled. After you Have made two or four or five such passes, each righc on top of the previous ones, you'll state to see some soil; the grass will seem damaged. If you don't see soil, set the drag bar a step deeper.
When you start seeing soil, move over half the width of the tines and do pother pass. The tiller will tilt to the side, leaning into the area you ha*
j alre^ Thac good; it'll do some more damage there and begin * damage a new half-row of sod. Somehow keep it going straight! At this ^
migHt ** "7 —g the drag bar another notch and see if the m-**
I still controllable when you try to cut deeper. If you've never done it before tilling sod will be a lot more work than you expected, based on the pictures in warden magazines showing smiling people strolling along behind a tiller that is cruising through soft, recently tilled soil.
When you get to the end of the row, swing around and start down the other side of the first row you made. Your tiller will now tilt into the other half of the first row. Keep to that pattern, slowly widening the tilled area. If rhe plot is more than 50 feet (15 meters) wide, you will soon see it would have been cheaper ro hire someone with a powerful tractor pulling a massively heavy four-foot-wide tiller.
This is important: If you're using a walk-behind tiller, do not expect to till deeply at first. If you work the whole area only two inches deep the first time over, you've done well! The result of that will be to kill almost all of the grass. The wisest thing to do at this point is to quit. Let your tingling hands and throbbing ears have a break. Let the sun and the passage of a few days help you kill off the grass you so valiantly damaged. If you should till that plot deeper now, you'll likely relocate some fragments of the grass into soil that'll stay moist enough tor it to start growing again. My advice is to take the tiller back to the rental yard and come back in three to seven days and attack the plot again, this time with a spade or combination shovel.
However, I know many of you are not going to take my advice. So be it.
In that case, the second-wisest action is to cross-till. Make another set of passes over the ground, this time across the ones you made first. It you tilled east to west the first time, now do it north to south. Use the same pattern;
start in the center and work outward to the edges. If the soil seems a bit softer now that you are below the thickest of the grass roots, lift the drag bar a notch and see if you can't get down two or three inches (five to eight centimeters:
farther on these cross-passes. This time, with luck and a powerful machine in fronc °f you, you'll end up maybe four to five inches (10 to 13 centimeters ' deep.
. You ^ould quit here; you'll be tired for sure. But unless your thin wallet 15 punting every second of rental time, I know you'll want to go on and cry to ^ a seedbed out of the entire garden. If so, cross-till again. Go back to the r*Cl0n made your first passes in (the Ion« way) and do it ail over again. hls lift the drag bar another inch or so and go for it ... as deep as vou can. It'die tiller has a handle char will swing from side to side 0ff<
your footprints are on the ground that will be tilled the next pass T * 3 bitso you are doing now. With a bit of luck you'll proudly end up vv,^ * ^^ <>ne ing patch of soil that contains only a few footprints. *
I w.mr you ro nonce rliose footprints. They should have , 1,. you. Immediately after you till, all the soil will be damp. Bur ,/ie C° te3cJj the surface, it will change to a lighter color. Early the next ' r ^ ^ ^nes v » . , Orn,n&bef0re our the sun shines intensely on the soil vs.t your p or and look at those foo, rrints If it hasn't rained, the whole tilled surface should still be dry except f0r the bottom of those footprints. They will be damp. Why? Because y0Ur weight pressed the soil particles together firmly enough to allow moisture from deeper layers to rise up. There is a term for this movement of water -capillarity flow. Understanding capillarity will help you sprout seeds more effectively and also grow a garden without irrigating it at all (or at least watering it far less frequently), so I'll have more ro say about it in Chapters 5 and 6.
One more thing I want you to notice if you have elected to use a walk-behind rotoriller. How deep did it actually go? If you managed to get the tines in as far as they would go, push your hand into this freshly flufFed-up earth and measure. Seems like eight inches (20 centimeters), doesn't it? Well, wait J few days for the soil to settle back down to a more normal compaction and check again. Now how deep did you till-' If it was a walk-behind tiller, not more than five inches (12 centimeters). If it was a big tractor sporting a heavy rotary cultivator run by an experienced operator doing honest work, seven inches (18 centimeters). Maybe.
And that is the trouble with rototilling. Loosening soil six or seven inches deep is not enough. Vegetables do not like their root systems to be so confined. Even worse, if the soil has much clay in it, the bent-over ends of the rotating tines will have compressed a layer of soil located at the farthest depth they reached. Immediately after tilling, if you'll push away the just-tilW A«» over a spot, you'll see the shiny polished "plow pan" I'm referring to. The p» 15 'nore comF*cted than the original soil was before you started tilling- * Pi™ pan acts as an effective barrier to root penetration and tends to h«* Jcpth of most vegetables' root systems to the soil above it. This is n*
& -1 really great garden you need loose soil to a depth ot at 1« 001'30 ccnt'meters), and you do not need any major barriers in the your crops' roots penetrating several feet farther down. The only practical way t0 do this on a garden scale is with a spade or combination shovel, or with a spading fork if you've got light soil. And that's why a few paragraphs above I rwice gently suggested — after the first tilling and then again after the first cross-tilling — chat you quit tilling. At that point you have already done most of the good that can be done with rototilling: the grass is pretty much destroyed without resorting to glyphosate; and the hardest, most compacted soil of the top three inches (eight centimeters) is pretty well broken up.
From this point the rest of the job — working the earth to a foot deep and making seedbeds — can be done by hand with a lot less effort. After tilling the first time, you can treat the ground as though you had an established garden going, follow my suggestions for restoring beds, and do what I soon will suggest for making hills and wide rows for a new planting season. It'll all be a whole lot easier.
1 do need to say one more thing about a plow pan. It is called that because a far thicker and longer-lasting compacted layer than a rototiller will make is routinely created by the common moldboard plow. The plow's bottom, or sole,' slides across the unplowed soil about seven inches (18 centimeters) down, resting heavily on the soil and pressing down at the same depth every single time the field is turned over. Repeat plowing over a few dozen years creates a hard layer several inches thick that starts seven inches below the surface. 1 his layer forms an effective barrier to root penetration. The consequence is that the crop tends to grow in the top seven inches of the field. The existence of more soil below the pan is of little use to the crop. Take a look at some of the drawings of root systems in Chapter 9 and try to imagine how poorly a vegetable will grow if it ideally has a root system four feet (120 centimeters) ^ceP' but is largely restricted to seven inches (18 centimeters). (For more on thls'1 suggest you read Plowman's Folly, listed in the Bibliography.)
Why am 1 going on about plow pans in a garden book? Because if your garden is on land that once was a farm field, it is likely to have a plow pan. 1 llJt Compacted layer will not go away simply because plowing has ceased. A ['low Pan may persist for half a century. The only way to get rid of it for a gar-cn ,s to dig through it with a shovel or fork.
1:vc" if you have created the illusion of loose soil with a rototiller, there is ' ° t,llc< "pan" and maybe a plow pan, so you still need to deeply hand-dig the r0ws and beds. However, once you have eliminated the sod, hand-dig^^ much easier.
Killing sod by hand-digging
After you've mowed the plot closely (and removed the mowings for comp# j if they make a thick mulch) and spread soil amendments, as described« the beginning of this section, you start to eliminate the sod. Basically you ^ up chunks of earth and turn them on their side or, better, upside down (ifthe chunks are not too big and you have the strength to do so). This damages the grass and will cause quite a bit of it to die. Then, about a week later, just before the sod starts growing again, turn it over once more, cutting through the chunks while making the second turn, to reduce their size. This second turn will finally kill most of the grass and blend in the amendments more effectively, and you'll also dig deeper, quicker, and with much less effort. On the third turn, after yet another week passes, enough of the sod will have decomposed that you'll be well on your way to having fine, crumbly soil nearly to the depth of the blade. Any preexisting plow pan will be gone.
Here are some tips. While spading, the bigger the chunks that you try to bite off, the harder you'll work. Be methodical and precise; nibble oft bits of a size and weight you can comfortably handle. Large tasks like making a new-garden can seem too daunting if you contemplate doing the whole thing at once, so I suggest that you divide your garden into beds of 100 square feet (ten square meters) and dig one bed (and one between-bed path) at a time. Using corner pegs, mark out strips about 5 feet (1.5 meters) wide (which is the length of an ordinary shovel, tip of handle to tip of blade) and 25 feet (eight meters) long. Start out standing at one end of that strip. Put the shovel's blade only one inch (2.5 centimeters) back from the end of the strip and push in" aS fai'as y°u can manage. If the sod is strong, this first nibble probably wiHg° >77 an inch or WO. Lever out this bit of soil and roots and put it i*»' wheelbarrow. Then move the blade back only an inch or so and push « * gam.7hls time it should gQ . a bk ^ Lever out chat bk ofsoil andp«
-heXtan0W- RePeat" ^ th£ dmC ^ ^ WOfked UCk foot wiA I L CentImecers) from the end of the bed and across its h>« A« bide til WiU ^ ' SnUl1 diKh Kou will probably be able to ltS length. And the wheelbarrow should be full-
Post a comment