Tiny Farm Gear

Wheel hoes are excellent! I started using one last season, though I’d been reading about them for a while—what took me so long?! They cut major time from straight cultivating, weeding between-row and paths where you’d usually use some type of hand hoe. Mine is from Valley Oak, and I’m absolutely happy with it. I use the standard 8″ blade, and that’s it. I haven’t tried the Glaser wheel hoes, but they’re no doubt fine as well. They come with a range of accessories, including blades in various widths, a hiller/furrower, a 3-tine cultivator. There’s a two-wheel/two-blade attachment for the heavier pro model that allows straddling a row. The handles can be offset for working from the side.

Not the most elegant bit of garden gear, but it could be a winner. This strap-on stool comes from the dairy world. Suppliers are listed on the linked page.

At double the price of the Troy-Bilt “Big Red” Horse, the top-of-the-line professional series BCS 948 walking tractor is quite the market garden machine. I haven’t tried or even seen one of these, but I’d love to. BCS is the biggest of the European 2-wheel tractor manufacturers. They have a full line, including a Horse equivalent. The walking tractor is an order above the North American big rototiller, they’re built as full-on agricultural equipment. The 948 is a true small-scale tractor, the difference found in the engineering, construction, and range of add-on implements. On this tiny farm, the Horse and the Kubota compact tractor cover the BCS from either side, to get an even wider range of smaller to larger jobs done, but the 948 could replace both for all of the most critical market gardening tasks, like tilling, cultivating and clean-up for several acres.

The Troy-Bilt Horse walking rototiller is a machine to swear by. I’ve had mine for four years and it’s gone through a lot. I bought a mid-1990s model, used, in mint condition. For a couple of seasons, it was the main tiller on two acres of market garden. I’d sometimes run it non-stop for an hour or more at a time, and for the better part of a day. No problems to date.

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The ho-mi digger is an odd tool that I’ve had for three or four years and still haven’t gotten around to figuring out. It’s a traditional Korean farm and garden tool, around for 5,000 years, according to one source, so I guess it’s time-tested! It gets quite the write-up wherever I’ve read about it, which is why I bought it: weed, dig, make furrows for seed. Versatile! All-purpose! It may be the only garden tool you need. Just now I found this page of impressive testimonials. Well, guess I’ll be sure to really try it next season. It comes in long- and short-handled versions. I’ve seen it in a few catalogs, Lee Valley has one (where I got mine) that’s actually made in Korea!