Meadow Creature broadfork
Our Meadow Creature broadfork
came in the mail a week and a half ago, but between the flood and my
cold, I only got to play with it for the first time Wednesday. My first
impression? This tool is fun! I'm slowly running out of terraforming opportunities to keep myself happy during the winter, so adding the broadfork to the mix will be as good as an antidepressant.
More seriously, in soft
garden soil, the broadfork works almost too well. Mark had to rein me
in, reminding me that our goal is merely a light loosening rather than
to really till up the soil. I eventually decided that a gentle fluff
from the edge of the bed is a good compromise in this kind of situation,
which will hopefully add a bit of aeration without negatively impacting
soil life. I plan to run a side-by-side comparison this spring, but
suspect that beds loosened lightly with the broadfork will be especially
good for root crops like carrots.
I also wanted to see how
well the broadfork performs in hard ground, so I headed up to the
extremely poor soil of the starplate pastures for test run number two.
Here, it took more effort to sink the tines into the earth and I had to
put my back into it to loosen once the tines were engaged. This area
will definitely be a good spot to work up a sweat next winter, and the
soil will probably benefit much more from broadfork action up here than
down in the main garden, but I'll admit this area felt more like work
than like play.
So did I select the right size?
I went for the smallest model, and that is definitely all I could
handle in the starplate pasture. I suspect I could have worked with the
next size up if I'd stuck to the main garden, but I'm not so sure the
extra two inches of loosening depth are really mandatory. So, yes, I
think Mark's nudge toward the smallest size was a good choice, and for
most female gardeners I would recommend the same. If you're particularly
tall or brawny, though, feel free to choose the 14 inch!
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.
I once commented to a vendor at a Mother Earth News Fair who was selling broadforks that their products were "Garden Porn". He and I laughed and laughed and laughed. And then stopped and nodded.