My Best Gardening Investment

Irecently bought a wheel hoe for my garden.

This tool does everything a regular hoe does, and more, with much less back-breaking labor. It’s made up of a tool bar mounted to two steel wheels and a set of handles. It came with four cultivator sweeps mounted to the bar, but you can add all sorts of other attachments.

I think it’s the best investment I’ve ever made.

With the cultivator sweeps, you can push it between rows to cultivate weeds and break up compaction. You can also mount one sweep to make a shallow furrow for planting. There are so many ways to use it.

It’s not cheap, though. I bought mine from Hoss Tools. They make a bunch of different attachments for it, too.

I already bought a set of plow attachments that can mount two different ways – one for making a deep furrow and the other for making a raised mound. You can use it to “hill” potatoes and corn as well. Hoss makes another attachment that installs irrigation drip tape under the soil. It’s really ingenious, and it makes this work a one-man job.

For the past few years I’ve grown a big patch of field corn. Last year it was quite a chore to keep all the weeds at bay, especially Johnson grass. The wheel hoe makes it so easy. Every week or so, I run up and down the rows with the wheel hoe.

It’s making me rethink my prejudice against planting in rows. For years I’ve been much more in favor of planting in wider in-ground beds. I try to use my plants as a living mulch – to keep the soil covered with plants so that weeds don’t get established. But it takes so little effort to weed with the wheel hoe, so I’m thinking about converting to rows as my crops come out of season.

Another new tool I’ve been using is called a singletine cultivator. It’s just a single sharp tine on a hook attached to a short handle. I use it to cultivate small weeds that pop up under established plants. This tool, in addition to the wheel hoe, has helped me out greatly with keeping weeds under control.

I’ve never had such a weed-free garden.

On another note, a couple of fellow gardeners called me after my last column about the squash vine borer. They offered some advice that I haven’t heard before.

One of them said he watches his plants for the first sign of vine borer damage. Once he notices it, he uses a razor blade or a sharp knife to make a cut along the stem where the vine borer larva has burrowed. This usually kills the vine borer. The cut eventually heals over, he said, and the plant is able to thrive.

He mentioned that some gardeners wrap the stem in aluminum foil to prevent the bug from entering the plant. But he wasn’t sure how successful that method is.

Another gardener called and said he soaks his squash seeds in diesel overnight before planting. Yes, diesel. He said he’s been doing this for many years and has never had a problem with vine borers. The diesel does not apparently harm the seed, but he said it does something to the plant that keeps the vine borers away. He said the diesel does not affect the taste of the squash, either.