Videos of hoes

June 24, 2013 3:06 AM

Stirrup Hoe. Collinear Hoe. Dutch hoe. Swan neck hoe (hand hoe). Grubbing hoe. Japanese Draw Hoe. In addition to gardening, hoes can be used for trail building. Just make sure to keep your hoe sharp.
posted by Deathalicious (45 comments total)

I spent a portion of my work week using a scuffle hoe, as seen in the Quarterly Bulletin of the American Rhododendron Society. And I have to say that the east beds look pretty nice and the weed population is down.

I was also able to use the phrase, "I used a hoe to fluff the beds"
posted by sciencegeek at 3:11 AM on June 24, 2013 [5 favorites]

I did want to include a video of the scuffle hoe but there's so much overlap between the action hoe, scuffle hoe, and hula/stirrup hoe that I was worried (not being an expert in hoes) that I would end up misidentifying one.
posted by Deathalicious at 3:20 AM on June 24, 2013

Worst hoe.
posted by buzzman at 3:46 AM on June 24, 2013 [8 favorites]

You see, gentlemen, a pimp's love for his hoe is much different from that of a square.
posted by OneThinDime at 4:10 AM on June 24, 2013

Jeopardy hoe by Ken Jennings.
posted by I'm Doing the Dishes at 4:35 AM on June 24, 2013 [7 favorites]

All those hoes have a flat blade that seems like it'd be a lot of work to draw through the soil. I've got one I love that bought for like $5 at the flea market. After a little research, I've determined it's a warren hoe. It cuts like a knife through the dirt compared to what must be more like shoving a box through jello of these other guys. Plus the points are great for tight spaces.

If you feel compelled to use a flat blade (good for chopping, say), it can do that too by holding it sideways.

It does need to be sharpened again, though.
posted by DU at 4:58 AM on June 24, 2013 [3 favorites]

Big fucking hoe.
posted by drlith at 5:00 AM on June 24, 2013 [3 favorites]

My gardening discovery of the decade (right after drip lines with pre-installed, self-cleaning, pressure-compensating constant flow emitters--making them very, very different from soaker hoses, for those of you who are wondering) is the diamond hoe.
posted by flug at 5:09 AM on June 24, 2013 [4 favorites]

It cuts like a knife through the dirt compared to what must be more like shoving a box through jello of these other guys.

The purpose of a square-bladed hoe is to turn the soil over quickly, that pointy blade must be a pain if you've got any significant area to cover.
posted by Dr Dracator at 5:11 AM on June 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

Well, I don't hoe turf. I use a shovel for that. And I mulch like crazy, so it's really just spot weeding once a week or so.
posted by DU at 5:13 AM on June 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

Agriculture and tool-making? What will those crazy hairless apes come up with next...
posted by Rhomboid at 5:14 AM on June 24, 2013 [3 favorites]

All those hoes have a flat blade that seems like it'd be a lot of work to draw through the soil.

I have a Dutch hoe (given to me by a respectable Dutch woman, in fact) and it is the perfect tool for small weed eradication after a row has been tilled, but just before I get around to planting anything/laying down cardboard and mulch. It also works well as a tool to get rid of weeds between the flat stones outside my front door. Like yours, it could use a sharpening. /toolguilt
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:15 AM on June 24, 2013

This is my favourite gardening tool. Not very good for turning and mulching, but it's perfect for weeding raised bed plots.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:20 AM on June 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I need to get a hand hoe for getting right in there between things.

Then again, Ruth is inspiring my laziness again. Maybe I'll just throw some more mulch on it.
posted by DU at 5:29 AM on June 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

Build your own hoe (and other stuff) - Wheel Hoe
posted by rough ashlar at 5:30 AM on June 24, 2013 [4 favorites]

so much overlap between the action hoe, scuffle hoe, and hula/stirrup hoe

"action hoe" sounds like a bit from an Eddie Izzard stand up routine....
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:35 AM on June 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

rough ashlar: "Build your own hoe (and other stuff) - Wheel Hoe"

Ha, that's the same guy who distributes plans for the Whiz Bang Chicken Plucker! Friend of mine bought the plans for it and is intent on building one soon. His stuff is great!
posted by jquinby at 6:03 AM on June 24, 2013

FYI - That "rogue hoe" (in the trail building link) is a rogue brand cotton hoe.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 6:17 AM on June 24, 2013

Big fucking hoe.

This gal's such a drag.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 6:20 AM on June 24, 2013

drlith: "Big fucking hoe."

I thought about including mechanical hoes but then I thought, nah.
posted by Deathalicious at 6:25 AM on June 24, 2013

Some draglines have an unusual method of moving, called walking. A couple of years ago, in a fit of rainy weekend boredom, I recreated the mechanism in Lego Mindstorms.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 6:29 AM on June 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

You missed the circle hoe.


And oh man, I want that Fiskars dutch hoe so bad.
posted by elsietheeel at 6:39 AM on June 24, 2013

Agriculture and tool-making? What will those crazy hairless apes come up with next...

It depends on the particular technology tree the game is using. Personally, I recommend selection "pottery," but that's just my strategy.

More seriously, I have learned a great deal about hoes this morning, which allowed me to check off my "I learned something box" before 9am. Now I can be an ignoramus the rest of the day.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:50 AM on June 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

Hoes are also the weapon of choice when killing copperheads in your yard in these parts.
posted by emjaybee at 6:54 AM on June 24, 2013

Froes before hoes!
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 6:57 AM on June 24, 2013

Damn you deathalicious I have a serious hoe obsession personally I like to use a wheel hoe with a stirrup attachment but I have on part of my garden that isn't in rows so it has to be done with a hand hoe.

My todo list today includes Weed garden and this inspired me but I have work to do!!!
posted by mrgroweler at 7:13 AM on June 24, 2013

I use this one all the time to dig small trenches and ditches, edge the garden, do major weeding, build up raised rows, and cut through grass to dig beds: http://www.easydigging.com/Garden_Tool/Grub_Hoe_Grubbing.html (6" one).

This is a chopping hoe similar to the Rogue hoe above, not a weeding hoe, they are two very different tools. Similar motion to splitting wood. Also important to keep nice and sharp.
posted by thefool at 7:35 AM on June 24, 2013

Wot, no Swoe?

I have memories of using a Swoe on my grandma's rose beds. Grandma didn't tolerate weeds, nor did she like soil that that had ‘crusted’. Given that she had five grandchildren, a swoe, and made the best pancakes ever, the problem never arose (for her, that is). Coal-black South Lanarkshire soil, the sound of the swoe blade riddling through the surface, I'm hungry still…
posted by scruss at 7:36 AM on June 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

El Cortito - thank you farm labor movement!
posted by aniola at 7:37 AM on June 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

Or what buzzman said.
posted by aniola at 7:39 AM on June 24, 2013

This hoe is begging to fulfill your one-up, two-down triple-p fantasies.
posted by drlith at 8:05 AM on June 24, 2013

This hoe is begging to fulfill your one-up, two-down triple-p fantasies.

Great for spreading manure on your perennials: one in the stink, two by the pinks.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 8:18 AM on June 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

You left out the McLeod!

Although, I much preferred using a Pulaski.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:54 AM on June 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

Pogo_Fuzzybutt: "You left out the McLeod!

Although, I much preferred using a Pulaski."

These are rakes and adzes/axes, respectively.
posted by Deathalicious at 9:14 AM on June 24, 2013

These are rakes and adzes/axes, respectively.

Yeah but it's still fun to rush out of your tool shed ready to decapitate some weeds with one over your head yelling, "McLeod!"
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 9:50 AM on June 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

I had a Wagon Ho. It didn't pull weeds, but it got us from St. Jo to Oregon before the snows.

ha ha.

Anyhow, one of the skills I picked up as a budding pre-teen was the use of a hoe, mainly working in cotton fields. The typical cotton hoe had been long in service, and was sharpened more like a skinning blade than a hoe--steeper angle, and you could nearly shave with it. If you had whiskers. One task was thinning, the other was scooping out weeds from among the young cotton plants. I don't remember the interval for thinning now, but it amounted to a few multiples of the width of the hoe. A third task was dressing the berm when you saw low spots. This was considered to be a skill, and if you didn't understand the theory, you got thrown off the row by the field boss. It was important that you didn't screw up the berms between the furrows, because the land was graded to a precise angle, and water is let in by a row-tender on a rigid schedule. If the furrows have breaks in them, plants on the far end may not get enough water. Indeed it was a skill, to be able to do this at a walking pace, without missing any weeds or screwing up the interval between the plants. Properly done, though, the edge of the hoe is hooked under the root of the weed, and the weed is popped out of the ground and left in the furrow to die in the hot sun.

Cotton choppers brought their own tools to the field. One task every good thinner performed was, about every-other row, to pull out a small, flat file, and dress the edge of his hoe. Hoes were personal tools, like pocket knives. They had a sort of personality that reflected their owners. A new hoe was like a new horse, and had to be properly honed to be useful.

Later in the season we came back to the field to pick the cotton. I started picking when I was about six years old, using burlap potato sack, or an onion sack. I could get about ten pounds of cotton in these. My mother pulled her cotton sack from a strap slung over one shoulder, and worked one row at a time. Her sack weighed around 75 pounds when she carried it to the scale. My brother's technique was different. He tied his sack's flap around his waist with its strap, and let it drag behind him, with the opening between his legs. He picked from two rows at the same time. His bag held anywhere from 100 to 125 lbs each time he took it to the scales. He threw the sack on a shoulder doubled, to take it to the scales. Mom shouldered her sack without doubling it. The sacks were made so that you could tie the flap over the mouth while carrying it, to prevent spilling the cotton. I carried my little sack on my shoulder, like the big guys. I didn't start using a regular sack until I was about fourteen.

The scales were set up on a tripod next to the cotton wagon, a trailer with 8-foot chicken-wire sides, some 30 feet long. You climb a ladder, then walk out on a plank, where you stand to dump your sack. Next to the scales, the field boss had a table, where he sat with his ledger to record your weights. At the other end of the trailer was a 50 gallon lister bag of cool water, from which dangled a stainless steel dipper.

My big thrill, enacted every time I brought my sack to the trailer, was to climb the ladder and dump my cotton, just like the grownups did. The field boss always seemed to take me seriously, and logged my meager tonnage in his book as if I were an adult. But he looked the other way when I climbed the ladder; sometimes I would "accidentally" fall off the plank onto the soft cotton.

Sometime during my mid-teens mechanical pickers became popular. Red-headed cotton pickers, we called them. The pun worked well on a couple of levels, the obvious one being that the machines were reddish orange. Left to us then was the task of stripping the plants of the shredded remains that the machines were not able to get off the plants. It paid more per pound than before, but you had to work more rows to fill you sack. I believe the machines have improved, because I seldom see strippers working the cotton fields anymore.
posted by mule98J at 10:15 AM on June 24, 2013 [137 favorites]

Picking cotton as a kid?

All respect, dude.
posted by BlueHorse at 10:30 AM on June 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

I am now imagining a "hoe table" much like the famous "pole arms tables" of early D&D fame. "The hoe-guisarme is +2 against mounted weeds, and does 1d8 damage."
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:37 AM on June 24, 2013 [6 favorites]

I think I've told this before on MeFi, but when I was a kid we moved from the Chicago area to the deep south, the black belt of Alabama. As a newly arrived yankee kid with a dad who was interested in gardening we acquired some cotton seeds to see how the plants grew up close. My dad, an Episcopal priest, was provided a landscaper for our house, the church rectory. Archie was our "yard man". He was in his 70's and very skilled at what he did (and he taught me how to hunt and fish in his off time). When he finished mowing or trimming, he'd fill out his hours by weeding dad's garden. He could weed closer with his hoe (always a giant, razor-sharp cotton hoe with a 6-foot handle) than I could with my fingers! One day dad was out in the garden working on one side while Archie was on the other and my dad noticed that the cotton was completely choked with weeds, so he asked, "Archie, you do such great work on the rest of the garden, how come you didn't weed around the cotton?" To which Archie replied, "I understand why you all would want to grow a couple plants, and I will do any job out here that you ask me, but I don't chop cotton any more."
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 10:41 AM on June 24, 2013 [50 favorites]

aniola, Thanks for the link to the cortito. One of my prized possesions is a cortito that I picked up at an estate sale many years ago. It still gets occasional use in my raised bed gardens. I pay homage to Cesar Chavez and the workers who used the cortito everytime I pick it up. I've seen, and would like to have, one of the long handled hoes that the farm laborers around Salinas and Soledad use in lettuce fields now.

My home tool cache now includes a half dozen different types of hoes as well as a MaCloed, Pulaski and a "lady shovel". I don't know how to use any other kind of shovel.
posted by X4ster at 12:29 PM on June 24, 2013

Froes before hoes!

Needs more cowbell Broadaxe!
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 3:59 PM on June 24, 2013

From what little I know about ag there's still loads that needs improvement. I've heard, for instance, that farm workers are supposed to have shade. Seems reasonable, but no cigar.

But it sounds like it is a world of awesome that they won the right to not use el cortito, the short-handled hoe.
posted by aniola at 4:27 PM on June 24, 2013

The hoe is the preferred agricultural implement in island SE Asia, in the form of the enormous all-purpose cangkul. It is used as a shovel, spade, hoe, mattock, you name it. Can't hardly find a decent spade, sniff sniff.
posted by BinGregory at 7:59 PM on June 24, 2013

Oh hey, I guess the cangkul is not far off from the grubbing hoe. But Lord that's all they've got and they use it for everything.
posted by BinGregory at 8:09 PM on June 24, 2013

Thank you for the memories, mule98j, felt like I was right there, and it took my back to parts of my childhood spent carrying banana suckers through the eat, picking strawberries in our farm, our the dirty and sawdust-filled task of constructing new rows.
posted by smoke at 9:41 AM on June 25, 2013 [1 favorite]