The best digging tools for the new allotmenteer

Sambucus_Nigra

My advice would be:
Either go for basic and cheap and if they get used and abused, you've not lost much cash [We've had a few wilko ones that have dug over our thick clay lottie for 4 years and have not broken once, and I use them with students and they are still intact] or go for some of the Joseph Bentley ones - expensive but so so good. I find smaller spade/fork is better as it means you don't try to get too much on it and it's easier on the back. If you are breaking or bending tines then there is too much soil on them!

A swoe - excellent tool for hoeing, gathering and digging deep roots out.

An azada as mentioned; excellent for long beds and brilliant for trenches and holes.

My one other recommendation is a good bulb planter - the Joseph Bentley one with the long handles is genius - you can use it to get dandelions/docks out by pulling the whole plug out and just taking the root out of the soil and putting the soil back in the hole. Plus you can use it to plant potatoes, and anything in small or medium pots that you have grown on in a greenhouse. And anything growing in toilet roll insides. Just a brilliant tool.

Leif

I went through two Joseph Bentley forks in a few months. The first failed when the shaft snapped in two. The second lost the two central tines. They look beautiful, but I'm not convinced. I now have a Wilkinson Sword, stainless tines, wood handle, which is more robust, but it has signs of failure. The clay and flints here are not fork friendly.

Sambucus_Nigra

Leif wrote: »

I went through two Joseph Bentley forks in a few months. The first failed when the shaft snapped in two. The second lost the two central tines. They look beautiful, but I'm not convinced. I now have a Wilkinson Sword, stainless tines, wood handle, which is more robust, but it has signs of failure. The clay and flints here are not fork friendly.

Mine are used by teenagers with behavioural problems and who try really hard to dig too much too soon too aggressively; not one has been bent or lost one tine. If your tools are not up to flint then perhaps you need an azada or mattock rather than a fork?

Leif

Sambucus_Nigra wrote: »

Mine are used by teenagers with behavioural problems and who try really hard to dig too much too soon too aggressively; not one has been bent or lost one tine. If your tools are not up to flint then perhaps you need an azada or mattock rather than a fork?

Mine is used by an adult with behavioural problems.

I don't think a mattock is suitable. The issue is lifting large flints, which puts strain on forks. In areas the 'soil' was mostly 6" flints. Forks are not designed for so much leverage. But the heavy digging is now done, the flints are in the septic tanks, and local tip, and the soil is now improved.

Sambucus_Nigra

Leif wrote: »

Mine is used by an adult with behavioural problems.

I don't think a mattock is suitable. The issue is lifting large flints, which puts strain on forks. In areas the 'soil' was mostly 6" flints. Forks are not designed for so much leverage. But the heavy digging is now done, the flints are in the septic tanks, and local tip, and the soil is now improved.

Exactly - but earlier you said that you weren't convinced about Joseph Bentley when it was you using them for the wrong things that caused the forks to break. Not the forks themselves.

cyclonebri1

Forget the advice not to rotavate, just rotavate.

IMHO it's like saying "don't dig the garden, you will make the weeds sprout", utter tosh.:mad:

They will regrow whether you dig/rotavate or simply fork over, but all these tooling processes make it simpler to remover the weeds when they regrow;);)

radiohelen

I've got a thing called an automatic spade. It's a bloody marvel. It basically takes most of the back crunching work out of digging. I use it lots along with my fork and a cheap spade from b&q.
I wouldn't rotavate because I've got twitch grass on my lottie and every little piece you chop up with the rotavator will sprout new next year. Bit of a nightmare.
I'm waiting until early October when I shall pour vast amounts of weedkiller on my remaining weeds and then dig the !!!!!!s in later in the month.
I started off organic but my back and the sheer size of my allotment (mine seems way bigger than others on the site) mean weed killer is my friend.

Leif

Sambucus_Nigra wrote: »

Exactly - but earlier you said that you weren't convinced about Joseph Bentley when it was you using them for the wrong things that caused the forks to break. Not the forks themselves.

You really do like to argue. I don't care for your petty point scoring and pedantry.

The reality is that a tool is just that, a tool. And for my garden, a fork is the best tool for the job. Spades are useless, I can't see a mattock working, so a fork it is, even though they are not ideal. I know I abused one Joseph Bentley spade, so since then I take more care. But the second one seemed to have a very brittle wooden shaft, with little in the way of spring, as it failed catastrophically, and I don't think it should have done so as I don't think I was abusing it. The Wilkinson Sword one I have is more durable

Lotus-eater

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

IMHO it's like saying "don't dig the garden, you will make the weeds sprout", utter tosh.:mad:

Well it does, which is why no dig gardening works well.

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

They will regrow whether you dig/rotavate or simply fork over, but all these tooling processes make it simpler to remover the weeds when they regrow;);)

Is true, as long as you do remove all the new little weeds that come from the chopped up roots. If you just rotovate and come back in 4 weeks expecting it to still look immaculate, you are in for a shock.


And a mattock is very suitable for lifting things like large flints, it's much stronger than any spade and has a great angle for levering up things.

Leif

Lotus-eater wrote: »

And a mattock is very suitable for lifting things like large flints, it's much stronger than any spade and has a great angle for levering up things.

Perhaps for flints near the surface, when there aren't too many. I doubt it would be suitable for my garden where it can take ages to dig a small depth due to the large number of flints, some small, some huge. In some parts there is little soil. A mattock would create razor sharp fragments. A fork also avoids breaking field bindweed roots into small pieces. It works well for going down a couple of feet. I think someone had inverted the top soil and subsoil at the bottom of the garden, probably when installing the septic tank.