I’ve been pretty busy in the garden, tunnel house, and grassy building site. That always seem to happen with me just before spring emerges – it’s a frantic time. 

Spades 

When you’re digging out flax or any plant, tree, shrub for that matter, some soil types make it difficult to get into with a regular spade. We had a rather dry late winter period with soil becoming pretty hard to open up. 

My best investment for these conditions is my trenching spade: 

A long and tapering blade that ends up with just 10 centimetres of bottom edge, easy to drive into the soil and allowing you to tackle the hard clay with a minimum amount of effort. 

I tried to dig out large, old flax plants and the only way to do that is with a trenching spade – no contest! 

Of course, as the name suggests, trenching spades were invented to create long narrow trenches for power lines of water pipes.  

Why dig our more than you need to? 

Weeding implements 

We all know what a hoe is; a push or pull device that can cut plants off their roots. I am really simplifying the various hoes in existence – there are many different varieties, but the system is quite simple: you either push the blade through the top-layers of the soil, or you pull. 

My favourite hoe is the one created by a Dutchman Jaap Sneeboer. I think he calls it “the Royal Hoe” – how Dutch is that! 

It has a double attack ability: a regular pull hoe that is made from very sturdy metal, and a three-tine fork that can go deeper to remove rather sturdy roots. That fork is also brilliant for aerating the soil. 

It’s a tall, and solid hoe that will do a multitude of jobs before you start sowing new seeds or planting new veges. 

Cutting Flax leaves 

Always a real pain in the bum. Flax leaves are so resistant to secateurs and knives. 

I have them on the sides of our driveway and you can literally imagine how these long and resistant leaves always grow out over the drive... 

The “knife” that works well is the Niwashi Flax knife and the Maruyoshi flax cutter (there are all kinds of models on the NZ market now). Make sure that you get a sturdy one that lasts for years. 

It’s a mean tool! The curved blade has extremely sharp teeth that will go through flax leaves without any trouble at all. The teeth are angled towards the bottom and therefore will always work in a downward motion. Of course, they will also cut the leaves of Cabbage trees.  

A Cultivator 

This thing weeds, pulls out roots, and cuts out all the undesirables from within the rows of edibles and ornamentals, without accidentally hitting the desirables! 

The Clark Cultivator was designed in Christchurch and is used as a hand-tool. The main blade emerges in a 90 degree angle and is super sharp. 

It rips roots off the weeds and the pointy end can be manoeuvred with incredible accuracy. That pointy end is also very useful if you want to quickly dig a hole to transplant anything that needs a new position. It even allows you to create a perfectly straight line to sow some seeds 

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