36 Home Vegetable Gardening 



There are so many, and so varied in usefulness, that 

 it would require an entire chapter to detail their 

 special advantages and methods of use. The cata- 

 logues describing them will give you many valuable 

 suggestions; and other ways of utilizing them will 

 discover themselves to you in your work. 



Valuable as the wheel hoe is, however, and varied 

 in its scope of work, the time-tried hoe cannot be 

 entirely dispensed with. An accompanying photo- 

 graph (facing p. 28) shows four distinct types, all 

 of which will pay for themselves in a garden of mod- 

 erate size. The one on the right is the one most 

 generally seen; next to it is a modified form which 

 personally I prefer for all light work, such as 

 loosening soil and cutting out weeds. It is lighter 

 and smaller, quicker and easier to handle. Next to 

 this is the Warren, or heart-shaped hoe, especially 

 valuable in opening and covering drills for seed, 

 such as beans, peas or corn. The scuffle-hoe, or 

 scarifier, which completes the four, is used between 

 narrow rows for shallow work, such as cutting off 

 small weeds and breaking up the crust. It has been 

 rendered less frequently needed by the advent of 

 the wheel hoe, but when crops are too large to admit 

 of the use of the latter, the scuffle-hoe is still an 

 indispensable time-saver. 



There remains one task connected with gardening 

 that is a bug-bear. That is hand-weeding. To get 



