April 17, 2017 – DeWit Dutch hand hoe – I can’t garden without it

        I am lost when I cannot locate my DeWit Dutch hand hoe.  It makes for a poor beginning of my gardening day when it has been misplaced . . . . Why would I look under the wide brim straw hat and the garden gloves . . . because that is where I left it?  UGGGH

        I have had about 5 or 6 in my lifetime and it is THE TOOL for me. 

        And, when I leave it out on the garden bench or out on the patio table and I can’t find it  . . . I say, “it has grown little feet and walked away”.   I actually believe that I have had several of them “pinched” by possibly strangers or neighbors in past years. 

My husband thinks I am crazy.

“You tossed it into the wheelbarrow with the weeds.  No one came by and stole it.” He says with great certainty.

If I had done that, wouldn’t I find it when I screen the compost?  However, none ever show up – they simply “vanish into thin air”.   The DeWit Dutch hand hoe is made out of metal and wood – it will not root into nothingness. 

No I say, over the years they have been “pinched” as Audrey Hepburn accused someone in the movie MY FAIR LADY.  One of my favorite movies and this scene is so splendid about “pinching” let me share part of it with you.

. . . and what become of her new straw hat that should have come to me?  Somebody pinched it, and what I say is, them that pinched it, done her in.   Them she lived with would have killed her for a hatpin, let alone a hat.”

        Sorry, off point . . . today I worked on the driveway garden and it hasn’t rained in over a week even though the weather forecast has indicated high possibility of rain for four straight days.  We need the rain.  It is April and I am already watering the vegetable gardens . . . not a good thing.

        So, taking advantage of this dryness I was dry weeding.   That is when you scrape the hard pan [soil] and sever the weeds at the surface and move only a little bit of dust. It is effective as you are not ruffling the top ¼ inch of soil re-distributing the weed seeds to germinate when it rains.   Scrape, scrape, and then sweep up the weeds with your free hand and deposit them into a garden trug or empty 3-gallon plastic weeding pot.  This way you also remove any possible dried blossoms that may seed back into your garden.

        I do this type of work sitting on the ground and you will learn by trial and error if you work better from the left to the right or from the right to the left . . . much like painting a room.  It depends on how strong your arm is.

        I find I weed better when I start at the far left of the garden.  I sit on the lawn on one half of my old yoga pad [one pad cut into two pieces] and I reach out with the Dewit hoe and pull it toward me.  I start out at the outside lawn side then move in. 

I like being up close and personal with my annuals and perennials in order to eradicate the weeds without injuring my plants.

        And, when I am down on the ground weeding, I am down for a while.  I keep three or four 3-gallon empty pots behind me on the lawn within easy reach.  With my DeWit hoe in my right hand I pull the weeds to me, grab a handful with my left hand and toss them into an empty 3 gallon plastic pot I have slightly to the left of me in the garden bed I am weeding. 

When I can no longer reach weeds from where I am sitting, I take the other half of the yoga pad and plop it to right.  Then I scoot onto it and continue weeding to the right, I pull the weed pot with me along with the empty pots which I keep behind me as I move along.  When the pots are full of weeds, I leave them where they are full and take a new one from behind me.

        When I get 3 or 4 pots full of weeds I get up and dump the weeds into a wheelbarrow or a large trug and carrying them off to the “weed compost pile”.  I continue on until that bed is done.

        There is something so satisfactory about getting to the end of the bed and looking back and seeing the weed free look.  I am purposely slow and methodical, it is my private time in the garden.

        And, even though I love my friends, when I can hear the telephone ringing from the distant house, I do not get up and answer the telephone.  That phone can ring all day and I don’t care because 9 times out of 10 it is a solicitation call of some sort.

        If you have not discovered what I consider my garden workhorse, the Dewit Dutch hand hoe – I suggest you make it your next garden purchase.  You will simply love it.