Loosening your garden’s soil can be a tiresome chore. Like really, really tiresome. Depending on the size of your garden, and your general soil makeup, it can be downright exhausting. Make it easier by using any one of these top-quality digging tools to help lighten the workload. This story originally appeared on Rodale’s Organic Life in April 2017.
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Broadfork
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Sometimes called a U-bar digger, this tool has anywhere from four to eight 10-inch-long tines attached to a U-shaped bar. The tines loosen the soil as you push the tool into the earth and pull it out.
Hoes come in dozens of shapes and sizes and serve many functions, from preparing and furrowing soil to weeding and cultivating it. Choose from the oscillating hoe, the warren hoe, or the collinear hoe, just to name a few.
You’ll probably want one of each type—a steel garden rake (pictured) and a steel or bamboo leaf rake. Garden rakes make short work of leveling out ground and creating raised beds, and leaf rakes are good for spreading lightweight mulches and smoothing the finely prepared soil on top of a seedbed.
Though specifically designed to cut into the soil with its four flat or slightly rounded tines, the spading fork can mix materials into the soil and harvest root crops as well.
Rotary tillers are unsurpassed for breaking new ground, breaking up large soil clumps, digging furrows, and mixing in soil amendments, compost, and cover crops. (But be careful not to overtill because it destroys soil structure.)
Undoubtedly the most important tools you’ll use when working the soil. Protect your hands when using many of the tools listed above by wearing gardening gloves.