Did you ever try to dig on extremely rocky place clay or soil? It must be a challenging job and time consuming but using a digging forks for this purpose maybe reduce some of your effort and strain on your body. Every gardening tool has its functions. Some gardening tools can do dual functions, while some have specific functions, so all the tools are helpful when the right time comes.
As a hobby, gardening doesn’t require many accessories to pursue—seeds, soil, water, and, eventually, some nutrients for your growing plants. While some gardeners love to collect gadgets, you can achieve your target with the help of a basic set of tools. On top of these, one of the essential gardening gadgets is the garden fork.
There are three main types of forks, which have a lot of functions:
Garden forks
Garden forks mostly have between four and eight tines spikes. As required, people construct these garden forks to root and dig in the soil and remove dirt, compost, or mulch. They have a curve to make it easy to remove dirt as you work to use it.
Digging forks
The primary use of digging forks is for digging into the soil and are ideal for moving compacted soil. These forks usually have between four and six tines with no curves.
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Hand forks
These garden forks typically have three tines and help for moving up a small part of dirt around small plants and seedlings, as well as helping to dig up seeds.
Features for good fork
Fork Material
The best digging forks are constructed from high-carbon steel. With lightweight compost helping to bend the tines, Stainless steel is also helpful for this purpose. Although some compost forks have aluminium tines,
Construction
If the material is essential, the construction of a digging fork is also necessary. There are two options for head-to-handle attachment of digging fork; if the handle is directly attached to the steel of the fork and dislocated in place, this is called riveted socket attachment. That type of method is unbreakable, and if the head is directly welded to the metal handle, this is called the welded shaft. And it is also a good choice.
These strapped-on heads may be weakened or get loose after some time, where the above two options don’t.
Handles
In past digging, forks have a wooden handle. These types of tools have a great helper in the garden; hardwood wooden shafts are usually unbreakable. If you’re going to choose a wooden-handled fork, then buy something like ash as it’ll hold up to the task a bit more.
Most of the current digging fork designs have a steel handle, which is usually weightless and long-lasting. In addition, steel shafts are not easily broken under human pressure.
Digging Forks Functions
There are various types of garden forks. Each type has its purposes.
- The large fork with four to eight tines is shaped with a horizontal curve, and a slight top curve at the bottom of the tines is called the compost fork. Between the use of forks are to dig compost, mulch, or soil.
- The curves in the tines help you scoop up a large heap of mulch or compost to spread it into the garden or turn and mix compost piles. This type of fork is more similar to a pitchfork.
A digging fork is a fork with four to six flat tines with no curvatures. A digging fork’s purpose is just as its name suggests; for digging, a digging fork is a tool when you want to dig into a tightly compact clay or rocky bed. The strong tines of the digging fork can move soils that a spade can have trouble cutting.
One of the most important benefit of using a digging fork is to reduce the work on your body. If you use a digging fork for tough jobs like this, you need a strong, well-constructed digging fork.
A digging fork constructed with steel is always a good option because usually, the tines part of the fork is made of steel, while the shaft and handles are made from fibreglass or wood to make the tool light in weight. These shafts are also constructed from steel but are usually heavy. Digging fork shafts and their handles come in different styles and shapes, such as D-shaped, T-shaped, or just a long shaft with no particular handle.
What is a Digging Forks Used for in Gardens?
Digging forks are used to dig up plants that have a hard, massive root base. Those may be garden plants that you try to dislocate or divide or parts of pesky weeds. Digging forks’s tines can cause minor damage to root pats, allowing you to get out more soil from roots than you can with a spade.
For garden plants, this may help to reduce the stress of transplanting. In addition, this can help you take out all the roots for weeds, so they don’t return later.
When you use a digging fork to dig up the plants, you can use it along with a spade, using the digging fork to clear up the soil around the plants and roots, then fulfil the task with a spade. Or you can do the whole job just with a digging fork. It will be up to you which way is most accessible.
Best Choices For Specific Purposes On Amazon:
- Digging Fork: Radius Garden 203 PRO Ergonomic Stainless Steel Digging Fork
- Spading Fork: Truper 30293 Tru Tough Spading Fork
- Garden Fork: Fiskars Ergo D-handle Steel Garden Fork
- Border Fork: Spear & Jackson 4552BF Traditional Stainless Steel Border Fork
- Broadfork: Bhttps://amzn.to/2zeK9b3ully Tools 92627 Broad Fork with Fiber Glass Handle
- Compost Fork: Gardena 3782-20U Terra line Compost Fork
Conclusion:
Work with gardening tools requires skill that has to be learnt and practised and you have to remember to take care of your gardening tools and keep them
Let’s see the next video on how to care, clean and sharpe our gardening tools.