Part 1: Tools Used in Vegetable Gardening

Hi! My name is Scott Reil and on behalf of expertvillage.com I will like to talk to you about vegetable gardening. Hi! We are going to talk for a few minutes about tools that you need for your garden. Whenever I talk to people about gardening and preparing the soil the first tool that all the guys want to talk about is the garden tiller. How big of a tiller do they need? What size should they get? Do they need the chain propelled or the piston-driven one? And well, truthfully you don't much need a garden tiller. This old girl gets a work out when I first make a bed, and that is it. I till one time with a power tiller. If you till anymore than that you start breaking down the structures in your soil, you start powdering and pulverizing your soil not leaving the air space that is good for the fungal and the microbes that actually will help support your root system. So one time when your first setting up the garden bed and no more. My favorite tool for cutting in and breaking up that soil and working and aerating is just a plain old garden hoe, and that is really what this garden hoe is meant for it is meant for cultivating it is made for: tilling up that soil, keeping it light and near rating near the surface and breaking up that soil surface so water and air can penetrate easily. Yeah you could do some weeding with this one but it is not the most efficient tool. That is why my favorite hoe is the old double action hoe. Some people call it a stirrup hoe you could see why. It looks awful a lot like the stirrup on a saddle. Basically the action hoe has a cutting edge on both sides. Now this doesn't go down and root out that weed but it chops that top off and it does it quick order. So in a small garden like mine I could go through, weed my whole garden in 5 or 10 minutes & make sure that those weeds aren't competing for nutrients with my vegetables, & that is important . When it comes to putting the vegetables in there are a couple of different tools that you might need. Now the good old fashion digging shovel is good for those bigger jobs if you are really having to turn a whole lot of soil and move it from one place to another, but for most of your garden jobs it is not the prefer tool. The tool that I like to use most of the time is a plan old spade and a lot of times people call these a D-ring spade. Some of them come with a flat edge and some of them come with a pointed digging edge. For the garden jobs I general prefer the flat edge. You are usually digging a small hole you are really not having to dig down into soil that needs a lot of breaking up. This is generally the preferred job, and I think if you've got these tools on hand you got a good start to preparing your garden.