New gardening tool

We've had a few of the raised garden beds in place since last July. Two beds have garlic planted in them, but the rest are awaiting spring.

And actually, it's getting hard to wait. Except for one nasty cold snap, we've had a remarkably mild winter. As I write this, temps are supposed to climb (again) into the low 50s, rather unheard of for early February. Everywhere we go, we hear people speculating about whether spring is here.

It's unlikely. We've been whomped with snow in March before. But at least right now, we can dream.

So the gardening bug is biting. A couple days ago, I decided to scratch that itch by doing some work in the raised beds that are getting overgrown with weeds.

I also wanted to try out a new gardening tool I purchased called a "push-pull hoe."

The diamond-headed, sharp-toothed hoe promised to remove deeply rooted weeds with less work.

Vicious looking, ain't it?

So I took it up to the garden and started ripping through weeds. And ... oh my.

In the bed with the heaviest weed infestation, it tore everything up with very little effort.

You can see the difference with half a bed done.

In a bed with fewer weeds, it just zipped through. The trick, I learned, is to let the tool do the work. It's not effortless, but neither is it effortful, if you know what I mean.

Rather than taking an hour or so per bed with hand-weeding, this push-pull hoe took literally five minutes for the easier beds, and about seven or eight minutes for the beds with heavier weed cover.

Of course, this is not a one-and-done deal. I'll be ripping up the beds multiple times before planting. But with this push-pull hoe, it's a whole lot easier to disrupt the weeds' growth.

10/10 can recommend.