Owners of country plots, vegetable gardens and private cottages are looking forward to the start of spring field work. Digging opens the garden season. At this time, manual labor enthusiasts take shovels - objects without which it is impossible to dig up the soil, plant something in it or dig something up. However, working with them is accompanied by lower back pain and enormous physical exertion. Today, thanks to the latest technical developments, it is possible to reduce the load on the back muscles and speed up the work process several times, since new devices for digging a vegetable garden have appeared - improved shovels, electric shovels and forks for digging the earth.
Variety of gardening tools
Working with soil is not an easy task. For this reason, it is extremely important to choose the most convenient equipment possible, which is capable of not only to some extent independently performing the required amount of work, but also significantly facilitating its implementation. There are many modern solutions for more comfortable farming. The main ones include:
- shovel with oval holes;
- forks with a shovel tip;
- a shovel equipped with a steering wheel;
- "tornado";
- electric shovel, etc.
Below we will look at just some types of devices for gardening and land work.
DIY potato digger
Nobody likes picking potatoes out of holes - this is the most difficult and tedious thing in the whole process of digging potatoes. Mount has made another hand-held gardening tool, a hand-held potato digger, which itself removes root tubers from the holes and also cleans them from the soil!
Mount
The advantage of this unit is that you don’t need to shake the ground with a shovel. He stuck his pitchfork under a bush, stomped on the lever with his foot - clean potatoes flew out of the ground.
This tool is convenient for digging all root crops. It is much easier to work with it than with a shovel - you don’t get tired at all!
A potato digger is also used for digging up a vegetable garden. But she needs to dig her garden not along, but across the plot.
Shovel with oval holes
This device with holes is a convenient tool for work both in the garden and on personal plots. This device is used in the process of digging up potatoes and digging up soil, loosening individual areas of the soil.
This unit is interesting in that it is equipped with a pointed bucket measuring 210 by 280 mm with narrow oval holes drilled in it. Due to these holes, clods of earth do not stick to the bucket, and when digging, large stones and roots are retained in it.
These features of the device significantly make the work easier, since you do not need to often bend down and manually remove everything stuck from the bucket. In addition, because of the holes, the device has less weight, so when digging in large areas, the worker will be less tired.
This unit is convenient for digging up an area with any type of soil, since it simultaneously digs up and loosens the soil. The tool is made of hardened steel and has a protective anti-corrosion layer.
Features of growing crops
The plant, which can be found in every area where there are vegetable beds, turns out to be not so simple and has its own characteristics of growing, saving and preparing. The wide distribution of horseradish is associated with its taste. Without horseradish leaves, it is impossible to preserve crispy cucumbers and spicy tomatoes, and as a spicy seasoning, not a single feast can do without it.
But as for growing and cultivating, this plant has its own special character, it’s not for nothing that it was called horseradish. The optimal place for growing the crop is light soils with moderate or weak acidity. The quality of the root can be judged by the foliage - abundant, deep green foliage with a stiff central stem indicates that this is a great place. Where there are enough minerals and organic fertilizers, but the main thing is the deep occurrence of groundwater.
Various techniques are used as agricultural technology, for example, planting with roots. Under normal conditions, the crop can be dug in the fall, and after 1-2 seasons you will simply have to deal with the rhizome throughout the entire area. This plant also loves timely feeding, especially the application of organic fertilizers in the fall. Alternation with other crops, for example, legumes, also has a beneficial effect. But as for planting, there is not much difference whether to plant horseradish in autumn or spring.
How horseradish grows
Alas, the plant, like other garden crops, is susceptible to diseases and often becomes a victim of pests. That is why it needs timely care and treatment with chemical and biological means of protection. A simple but effective method of prevention is to irrigate the foliage with copper sulfate or Bordeaux mixture. Treatment time is in the spring after the foliage opens and in the fall 2-3 weeks before harvest.
In terms of agrotechnical measures, horseradish requires timely weeding and removal of wilted leaves; it is the foliage affected by pests that causes damage to the rhizome. The planting pattern is row with an interval of 30-40 cm in a row and up to 40 cm in row spacing.
Forks with a spade tip
This tool is literally indispensable when digging up heavy types of soil, since its design makes it possible not to exert too much effort during work. The spade fork has, in addition to the usual fork teeth, one bayonet located on the edge. This protrusion differs from others in its greater sharpness and width. The bayonet of this device penetrates the soil layer without much effort, and the remaining teeth can easily be placed behind it.
When digging up potatoes, for example, the fruit will remain on the fork and the soil will slide back. In this case, you don’t have to bend over and pick up the tubers manually. They can be easily transferred from the unit to the wheelbarrow in one movement. In addition, vegetables are not damaged, as happens when working with a shovel.
As a rule, work in suburban areas , that is, people who are not young and do not always have good health, for this reason the question of what is the best way to dig up the earth becomes acute.
When using such forks, there is no need to bend and turn repeatedly. The work mainly involves the muscles of the shoulders and arms, while the lower back is practically freed from the load . For older people this is an extremely important point . The less they get tired, the more work they can do.
Summarizing
All these tools are easy to make with your own hands. They make the toughest jobs easier and increase productivity. Flat cutters and miracle shovels should be in the arsenal of every cultivated summer resident. But they are only suitable for land that has already been cultivated - they cannot raise virgin soil. True, most gardeners do not face such a task.
On FORUMHOUSE you can find more smart tools for cultivating land, learn how to make a homemade tractor, watch a video that shows in detail the device of the “Mower” flat cutter, and videos that talk about life hacks that improve the life of a summer resident.
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Homemade instrument with steering wheel
For those for whom the speed of digging is important, the invention of one person will help, who belonged to that category of people who live on self-sufficiency and only thanks to cultivating the land and growing cereals, vegetables and fruits. We are talking about monks. One of them is our contemporary, living in one of the modern monasteries, monk Gennady.
His invention became known thanks to one of the programs on central television, where the ascetic inventor demonstrated to a wide audience a homemade shovel-like unit with an interesting design. The upper part of this tool was made up of a regular bicycle handlebar. As a result, monk Gennady received unique equipment for gardening consisting of the following elements:
- stainless steel pipe with a diameter of approximately 2 cm;
- the tip of an ordinary shovel;
- device with a spring for regulation;
- bicycle wheel.
The inventor called this homemade unit a hand plow and even gave it the name “Vyatka Plowman”.
This hand-made plow can make it possible to plow the soil many times faster than with an ordinary shovel. And due to the rotating method of operation, the device does not load the back in the lumbar region. In addition, Father Gennady’s miracle shovel is well applicable to dense layers of earth.
The length of the unit is adjustable, and the bucket, due to its optimized width, is capable of scooping up 2 times more soil compared to an ordinary shovel. Due to the fact that when you turn the steering wheel, the soil is tilted to the side, there is no need to bend over and remove lumps. This is very convenient when planting crops. People who suffer from radiculitis will appreciate this tool.
The advantages of this product include
- simplicity and speed of production;
- Any available materials will do;
- low or almost zero cost.
The device can be made in various sizes. Thanks to this, the process of removing unnecessary plants is easy to carry out even while standing. Which is very convenient for older people.
As you can see, making an attachment for a screwdriver to remove weeds is not difficult. The work on manufacturing the device takes literally a few minutes, and the benefits of using a simple design are enormous.
Shovel Tornado
The design of this tool for digging soil is collapsible, which is very practical and convenient when transporting the device. It includes:
- central metal rod;
- rotating handle;
- working part with sharp teeth.
It is worth noting that the teeth are arranged counterclockwise. Each part of the tool is connected to another or to the base using bolts and nuts.
During operation, the device is placed vertically with its teeth in the soil, after which it is turned a full turn with a handle. In this case, the teeth are completely immersed in the ground, and the effort a person makes is minimal.
Among gardeners, it is customary to call this cultivator a woman’s shovel. This is because it is not necessary to put in too much effort to complete the work.
The Tornado shovel is a multifunctional device for cultivating the soil with your own hands. With this device we can carry out the following work .
- Remove the soil from the garden beds.
- Digging up places for planting.
- Cultivate the soil around bushes and trees.
- Remove weeds from the ground.
- Weed in the middle of rows of beds.
- Clean up flower beds, collect garbage and dry grass.
Cultivator “Tornado”
With the help of such a root remover, you can remove the roots of old shrubs and remnants of the root system of weeds from the soil. The teeth on this cultivator are located so that the work is efficient and easy. Also, using a similar root remover, you can treat the tree trunk area around bushes and fruit crops. This will not harm the root system of plants at all. The cultivator can also remove grass, as well as the remains of garbage on a summer cottage. The Tornado cultivator is very simple to operate and assemble. Intense physical effort is not required.
Weeder
It can be made from a board about 30 cm long and up to 10 cm wide. The board should be processed with a plane, the corners should be rounded and sanded. Then you need to hammer several nails into the board. Determine the quantity yourself. These will be the teeth of the weeder. The thickness of the handle should be made so that it is comfortable to hold in your hands, and its length allows you not to bend over. The handle must be secured firmly.
The weeder is good to use to destroy weeds that have not yet risen.
Fokina flat cutter
It looks like an ordinary flat wooden stick with an irregularly shaped metal “hoe”, bent in several places. However, thanks to the bends of the plate, this tool performs not only weeding, loosening and hilling, but also other types of work. The original Fokin flat cutter comes with two attachments. The large one is intended for cultivating the soil, the small one is for more “delicate” work.
- Fokina flat cutter - what you need to know before work
Fokin's instrument was initially conceived as an amateur instrument, but over time it managed to win the sympathy of many gardeners and gardeners.
Successful weed control is only possible when using a set of measures to destroy them. Each tool has its own “role” - so choose the optimal solution that will be the most effective for destroying unwanted plants in your garden.
