162 



HOEING AND MOWING. 



These two important summer operations 

 tax the physical powers severely — perhaps, 

 more severely than any other kind of field 

 or garden work. But, whether performed 

 by labourers used to such work, or by a 

 person whose hands it would not be seemly 

 to have covered with corns and blisters, the 

 work itself must be clone well, and fre- 

 quently repeated. Among growing crops 

 the hoe is of most essential service. Not 

 working deep, it does not hasten the evapo- 

 ration of moisture from the roots of plants, 

 as digging near them would be sure to do 

 at this time of year, but it leaves the surface 

 in a pervious state, so that a small shower 

 would find its way down at once to the 

 roots of the crop; whereas, on hard sun- 

 baked soil, it would all run off, and not a 

 drop remain for the benefit of things in 

 need. Then, as a weed-destroyer, the hoe is 

 of great importance. A little two or three- 

 inch onion hoe, worked regularly among 

 rows of rising crops in early summer, would 

 pretty well clear off the whole of the weeds 

 for at least that season ; but it is rarely 

 people have the courage to begin hoeing till 

 weeds have risen in great strength, and 

 threaten to spoil the crop by drawing it and 

 exhausting the ground. Then the hoe 

 comes into play, and if the ground is at all 

 hardened, and the ridges levelled down some 

 time before, it is fatiguing work, and soon 

 blisters the hands of any one not daily ac- 

 customed to such manual labour. But the 

 grand thing is to have a proper tool for 

 whatever work is to be done. We have a 

 somewhat large collection of tools and im- 

 plements, purchased at various times and 

 places, and amongst them a variety of hoes. 

 The common hoe is a fair tool enough for 

 hoeing up cabbages and potatoes, dressing 

 seed beds, and such light work on loose 

 ground ; but try a piece that has been a bit 

 trodden over, and is now covered with a 

 luxuriant crop of plantain or groundsel, and 

 what sort of an implement is it ? Ten to 

 one you loosen it from the handle, break it 

 in the socket, put it out of gear, or, before 

 you have had time to over-task the imple- 

 ment, leave off in disgust at finding your 

 hand bleeding. Between the thumb "and 

 forefinger you will doubtless have an awk- 

 ward gash that will take a fortnight to heal 

 over — all owing to the implement being of 

 the wrong shape, wrong size, and wrong 

 weight. If you had had one of Gidney's 

 Norfolk hoes, which has the blade set at an 

 angle, the task would have been easy. 

 Lately, we made a trial of several hoes, on 

 a piece of ground that for years had been 

 overgrown with the great bindweed or white 



convolvulus. Any ordinary hoe was useless ; 

 the stuff seemed to grow all the stronger for 

 being so gently topped; the Dutch hoe was 

 too much work, and could not be used at 

 the further side of the piece for want of 

 power to work it at that distance. We 

 thought at once of two famous hoes — the 

 Draw Shave and the Canterbury. The 

 Draw Shave hoe is the invention of the 

 celebrated Sigma, and is sold by Mr. Powell, 

 of Hurst Green, Sussex. It is a powerful 



instrument, in which the principle of a thrust 

 hoe is reversed : it is of considerable weight 

 in its action, though light enough to the 

 hand in use ; and the blade, set inwards at 

 an angle, a trifle more acute than 45 degs , is 

 of steel, terribly sharp, and well braced to 

 the handle. The one we tried measures nine- 

 and-a-half inches in the blade, mounted on 

 a handle 4 feet 6 inches in length. With 

 this instrument, we find, we can make a 

 clean cut of five feet long with a most tri- 

 fling amount of exertion, and, as the hoe is 

 drawn towards the operator, it shaves the 

 whole surface so as literally to cut off a top 

 slice, and leave the slice behind. In fact, 

 the blade passed under the surface and cut 

 every weed through at the root, but left 

 that surface just as it was as to level : there 

 is not a crumb thrown aside. It is the most 

 effectual cutting hoe we ever took in hand 

 — thanks to Sigma, who, to render it an 

 auxiliary to his corn-planter, makes it up to 

 fifteen inches 'wide, to take the whole space 

 between two rows of turnips, and enable a 

 man to clear an acre and a half or two acres 

 in a day. 



The Canterbury hoe is not a cutting but 

 a clawing hoe; it tears and tugs, and is 



