Using Your Garden Spade
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First warm up your muscles with a few bending and stretching exercises. Cool spring air can reduce circulation causing cramps.
Spade Work
Avoid digging when soil is sticky or slushy wet. This damages soil. Lifting heavy sodden clay is an enormous strain.SPIT AND FURROW
Turning a spit, or slice of soil, is all about leverage- aim to cut a spit about 4 inches thick - Smaller spits break up the soil better, besides being lighter
- start with the Digging Spade blade upright - Place one boot on top of the blade and with your weight over the top push straight down - An American Shovel has the handle inclined forward when blade is upright
- then pull the spade/shovel handle back from the top – Also place the digging foot a step back
- you lever the spit free from the soil - Don’t try lifting without leverage - It strains
- now the other hand grips just above the blade - The other boot is forward while bending the knee
- twist the handle away from you to turn the soil over – The result looks like a plough furrow – or straighten the leg and back (pushing from the legs) to raise and remove soil to a barrow.
DIGGING AND DOUBLE DIGGING
1 - Ground for digging
2 - Skim weeds off strip
3 - Dig trench, pile soil at end
4 - Skim next weedy strip into previous trench
5 - Remove soil from new trench into previous trench
6 - Skim; also mix well-rotted manure into trenches if available
7 - New trench; double digging also involves loosing trench bottom with fork / garden claw
8 - Skimming only takes the top off weeds. 
9 - New trench; underground perennial weed stems should be sorted out at this stage
10 - Dump remaining weeds into last trench
11 - Fill last trench with soil pile from 1st trench- JOB DONE - |
Use a sharp Dutch Hoe to skim weeds off your first strip. Soil and weeds from the first trench are placed in 2 piles. Then subsequent trenches are dug into the previous trench.
The larger Digging Spade is the gardening tool for straight sided trenches. Say you start with the spade width across the trench. You turn a spit into the previous trench, then take a step back and repeat it.
With an American Shovel blade inclined at 37o to the handle you could try turning to face the long side of the trench to throw the soil forward. But this requires digging a spit that's too thick for comfort.
Don't forget: use the gardening tool as a lever, keep it sharp, let it do as much work as possible.
If you have a hard layer beneath the first trench you might consider double digging. This involves loosening the bottom of the first trench. The long handled Garden Claw (illustrated below) is an excellent gardening tool for this job. Otherwise a Digging Fork will do.
If you have well-rotted animal manure available then include some in the trench. Where you expect to grow deep rooted crops the manure can be placed on the trench bottom. But when shallow rooted plants are to follow: fruit, onions; or even carrots for example, its better to thoroughly incorporate it. In an ideal world you would use the garden claw or digging fork to mix it with the soil added to each trench.
A key to success is not to expect too much of yourself. Take regular rests. Don't dig your trench too long. The procedure outlined allows you to vary your activity so you are working different muscles. A change is as good as a rest. So you may consider leaving off periodically to do other jobs (my favourite other job is putting the kettle on). But going for a barrow load of manure is a good break too.
The final job is to fill the last trench with the soil you piled up from the first trench. Clean your gardening tools and Your Done!
Find out about No Dig Gardening. American style shovels have a pointed blade which is formed into a scoop as opposed to a flat and squared off blade. The shovels with longer handles give more leverage and deeper digging.
But the square blade of a spade is steadier, makes a neat trench and the D shaped handle gives more control. The shorter spade handle is more versatile for all round earth moving.
Check these spades out.
Compare shovels U.S.A.
Safe Digging with a Shovel
- in the U.S.A.
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DIGGING AROUND SHRUBS
Digging close to roots is usually a job for the fork not the spade. But when excavating and transplanting shrubs dig a circle trench and keep the face of the spade along a line of radius and not facing the shrub where it chops the roots. Use the fork to loosen soil between roots and lever up the root ball. The following link displays an illustrated method for transplanting shrubs. and you can find more on effective techniques to use gardening forks here.
TO DIG DEEPER
When excavating holes more than one spade deep, (a pond for example) it strains the back. I can only recommend widening the hole first so you can stand on the bottom to dig it deeper.
Before planting shrubs do remember to water root balls, spread the roots a little, and loosen up the sides of the hole. Most shrubs will benefit from addition of
bone meal.
Keep gardening tools in order - don't use your spade for a crow bar or a mallet.
Find lawn rakes
Discover the Small Garden Grubber, Weed & Planting Knife, Planting Hoe / Small Mattock & other small hand tools here.
There's more information on using gardening tools coming soon. It may seem that anyone can dig, rake or fork - it seems easy to understand. But work with gardening tools requires skill that has to be learnt and practised. Do remember to take care with your gardening tools and keep them clean and sharp.
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^ Bottom of the garden
Cutting and Pruning - supplementary
HAND SECATEURS
Important point - always keep them clean. After use wipe dirt off with a rag and spray with WD40.Use larger secateurs to cut larger branches.
- Remove dead or diseased wood first.
- Remove wood that is congesting the shrub, branching inside, knocking against other branches, etc…
- Open the shrub to the air and the light.
- On fruit bushes remove wood not strong enough to carry the crop.
- Prune to an outward facing bud.
- Cut across diagonally from just above the bud to just above the base of the bud on the opposite side.
- Time and position your pruning according to the type of shrub - does it bear flowers and fruit on current year’s growth or previous years growth?
- Cutting strong shoot leaders will usually lead to branching.
- Anvile secateurs have the edge for tackling woody branches as bye-pass or parrot secateures suffer the problem of getting jammed.
A page dedicated to gardening tools for cutting and pruning is to be posted here soon.
BOTTOM OF THE GARDEN - more information and links
