Tip Tuesday: Favorite Tools
I had to think about how to organize this topic since I have so many things/tools that help me around the farm. I decided to make it a repeating topic so I will list a few of my favorite tools around the farm that you may also need in your garden or farm life!
Below is my dad (and mom in the background getting peony roots in the ground!) with what I thought was a great tool, a hand auger…we still have it sitting in our tool shed collecting dust. But this is not much better than a regular old shovel in my opinion. Especially when you are planting 50, 100, 300 plants at a time.
So my first favorite tool on the farm is my gas powered auger. If you can run a weed whacker, you can run the auger. It makes quick work of planting our perennials such as peony roots, woodies, trees etc. I’m trying to increase my ratio of annual to perennials as the farm grows and I couldn’t do that without the gas auger.
It’s certainly possible to use it by yourself by mapping out where you want to plant and drilling the holes, then going back and planting. My favorite way is to make it a two person job. (Honestly, what’s not better as a two person job on the farm?) One person drills holes as the second person follows, plants, and covers with soil. It goes so much faster than digging on your own. I would never go back.
One word of advice: hold on to that sucker if you have rocky soil. When it hits a rock it stops the rotation of the bit but the momentum of the turn is transferred up to the motor/handles and can really pull you around. If you have really bad shoulders, I would recommend having someone else handle the auger.
My next favorite tool is my stirrup hoe. I HATE weeding and everything that can be grown in landscape fabric is grown in landscape fabric on my farm. With so many plants in the ground and such heavy weed pressure, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the weeding without fabric. It’s hard enough keeping up with what grows around the plant in their tiny fabric holes. I am trying to disturb the soil less and less to avoid bringing weed seeds to the surface. I would love to transition away from fabric eventually but for now it’s a saving grace.
With that said, I do love my stirrup hoe for weeding but more so for prepping new beds or beds that are being flipped for a new crop. Its blade is shaped, yep you got it, like a stirrup, and slides under the top layer of soil cutting off the weeds below the surface. It’s great to disturb the soil just before planting to get ahead of new weed seedlings that have gotten a head start on your flowers.
I’ve used all sorts of hoes and tools for weeding and this just seems to work the best for me.
My final favorite tool for today is My t-post puller. If you use t-posts on your property and don’t have a puller, stop what you’re doing and go to Tractor Supply and get one. It is another game changer. We used to hook them to the tractor bucket with a chain and pull them out. It works. But it’s a pain. This handy little jack pulls them out of the ground like a knife in butter AND makes you feel like a boss.
We use t-posts to hold our support netting and need to remove them every season. I would say nearly 75% of our rows have support netting with a minimum of 6 t-posts per row. That’s a lot of posts to remove! I can’t always get the tractor into all the tight spaces either and this little jack always does the trick! We love it!