....the elbow grease and good shoulders!!! I agree!!

You do need to work along at your best depth and to your tolerance, but at least the tool won't break.

I have a treasured weeding tool: a WW I spike bayonet. The gradual taper makes it easy to push deeply in to heavy or rocky soil.

Something about the dogleg mounting bracket and the circular cross section of the spike makes it easy to "swizzle" in a circle around the weedy root. Like coring an apple, but on a taper.

Sometimes I get a surprisingly long bare root, and sometimes I pull out a "cone" of clay around the root.

I also have some 69 cent used knives from Goodwill. They are narrower and longer than my trowels, as strong, much cheaper, stainless steel, and have better handles. I usually dull the edge and sometimes shape the tip into a Vee.

Sounds good, Rick.

Our soil eats knives. I once bought a hatchet to loosen the top layer, but lost it.

Yikes! I've gotten spades and even a pick "stuck" in clay, but was always able to wiggle it free eventually.

Someone clued me in to the idea of wetting the clay before I tried to chip it out ... good tip!

BTW, I liked all your tips. I went to your Member Page and read them one after another. I wish you lived next door so I could watch and learn.

Thanks, Rick.

The humorous moments would be plentiful. For example, my family gets plenty of chuckles out of my planting roses in December snow flurries.


I've had to let the hose dribble on areas I needed to use the post hole auger.

Moistening our clay works great; wet is .... glue.


Let it dry...it's concrete.

RickCorey said:I have a treasured weeding tool: a WW I spike bayonet. The gradual taper makes it easy to push deeply into heavy or rocky soil.

Something about the dogleg mounting bracket and the circular cross section of the spike makes it easy to "swizzle" in a circle around the weedy root. Like coring an apple, but on a taper.

Sometimes I get a surprisingly long bare root, and sometimes I pull out a "cone" of clay around the root

I keep thinking that I should find the right mounting bracket to attach it to the long handle of my broken steel rack. Then I could deep-weed without bending over.

Here are photos: