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Introduction
Power tools
Other tools
Other equipment
Technology and its value
Safety
Sometimes, gardening writers give advice which may not be useful or relevant. For example, we often read that a garden or allotment can be dug over coarsely and that the large clods will be broken down by the action of frost over the winter. Recent winters in this country have been predominantly very mild, and this action will no longer take place. I try to avoid this kind of mistake. I advocate using a power tool if available to bring the soil from a coarse condition to something near to a fine tilth.
Nothing on this page is original. It may be that most or all of the information is already known to you. Even if it isn't, the information here is likely to be useful mainly to people with areas to cultivate which are 'larger than small.'
I can justify, I'm sure, owning the power tools I have. The time I have available for cultivating two allotments is limited. I use hand tools as well as power tools, of course, and in many cases instead of power tools.
In accordance with the principle of one tool-many functions (provided, of course, that it can carry out the functions adequately) I use the tools for as many different purposes as possible. For example, I sometimes use the Ryobi strimmer I describe below not just for cutting grass but for chopping up vegetation before composting. This increase in surface area shortens the time needed for composting. (Before bacteria and fungi get to work in the compost heap, detritivores break down the vegetation into much smaller pieces. Cutting the vegetation first shortens this first phase - but still allows plenty of food for the detritivores.)
The advantage of the strimmer is that it can make use of the expand-it system. One power unit, the petrol engine of the strimmer, can drive a range of other tools, which are simply inserted after taking off the trimmer attachment: again, the principle of 'one unit, many functions. Alternatively, if there's a greater need for a brush cutter than a strimmer, the brush cutter can be bought instead and the engine of the brush cutter will drive the attachments. There are five tools in all: a tiller/cultivator, a hedge cutter, a pruner for substantial branches, a blower and an edger. I only have a use for the tiller/cultivator and the hedge cutter. The expand-it system is used by some other manufacturers as well.
The petrol strimmer I have is a Ryobi PLT-3043YE, which costs about 85.00, a basic model. There's also a model which is more durable, and more expensive (about 145.00), the Ryobi RLT254SFC.
One of my allotments is large, with a sizeable expanse of grass around the cultivated area. This grass forms a habitat for some animals, so I allow it to become very long, but I do cut it at intervals in the growing season using the strimmer, but not too short. When chopping up vegetation for composting, it's essential to use the technique of starting at the tip of the plant and working gradually downwards. This same technique is used, but more quickly, when cutting grass.
The tiller attachment (which costs about 60.00) is very effective, even if it doesn't cultivate the ground to any great depth. It's valuable for forming a fine tilth from ground which has been very roughly dug over by spade. With winters generally so mild, it can't be assumed any longer that frost will do the work of breaking down large clods of earth for us.
The hedge-cutting attachment (which costs about 50.00) is valuable for pruning severely overgrown hedges. It has the advantage of a long reach.
The main disadvantage of all the components of the system is that, combined with the power unit, they are heavy, but in other respects I find them preferable to using separate battery powered tools.
But the most essential power tool for me is a cordless screwdriver/drill. Metal stakes are fastened to the boards I use to surround beds and to construct composters. Each stake requires three screws. Using a hand screwdriver is possible, of course, but a cordless screwdriver saves a great deal of effort. I originally used a Black and Decker 12volt cordless screwdriver/drill to insert the screws, a light-duty model which protests very often at being called to do the job. If a pilot hole is drilled first using a small-diameter drill bit, the job can be carried out without any difficulties. Now, I use a Bosch 14.4 volt cordless screwdriver/drill to insert the screws. This is a medium-duty model and has ample power to drive home the screws without first drilling a pilot hole.
I've made use of both these tools for other work - to drill holes in posts so as to insert eye bolts which keep the wire for fencing taut, and to drill holes in the metal framework of the large greenhouse - derelict when I took over this particular allotment - in order to secure corrugated PVC sheets.
I have two flame weeders. One is a small weeder (manufactured by Parasene) which runs on gas canisters. The weeder is cheap to buy but expensive to use for weeding. I use it for controlling slugs and snails as much as for weeding and for this use, it costs very little. Often, it can be turned on for a very short time. It's easy to light - simply press a button.) Slugs and snails are the only pests that I do kill, directly. I far prefer to keep pests away from crops rather than kill them, but slugs and snails need more ruthless treatment, I think. The methods people use who feel likewise generally produce a disgusting mess - a slug crushed underfoot, or, far worse, between finger and thumb, or bloated bodies in beer traps, or the bloated bodies of slugs which have been dropped into water to drown, or the dead bodies surrounding slug pellets. Blasting them with the flame weeder gives an instantaneous death. There are none of the lingering and painful connotations of 'burning to death.' I always keep the flame directed on the unfortunate pest for longer than is strictly necessary, to make absolutely certain that the pest isn't suffering. The fluid that leaks out immediately afterwards is followed by vapourization. All that's left is a burnt residue. The flame from the weeder is small and can be accurately directed. It's possible to attack pests which are quite close to crops.
The other weeder is far more powerful, the Sheen X300 flamegun, which runs on paraffin and is expensive to buy but fairly cheap to run. The buying of this tool couldn't possibly be justified for small areas. Its main advantage, I think, is in the weeding of areas which are not level or otherwise difficult to weed with a hoe. It has the advantage that it kills weed seeds on the surface of the soil (but not deeper in the soil) as well as weeds. The flame weeder is very strongly built, but not so the optional trolley which can be bought to transport it. The one I had broke due to defective welding. I also have the optional hood which is fixed to the weeder to direct the flame and to protect plants which aren't weeds from the flame. This is too wide to be widely useful, I find.
I've made extensive use of a scythe. (Scythe blades are manufactured a very short distance from my allotments, which are situated in a valley where scythe blades were ground using water power in the eighteenth century.) The technique of scything isn't at all difficult to learn and it's exhilarating rather than tiring, at least for a time, but although it's far more idyllic to use a scythe than a mechanical strimmer or brush cutter, there are difficulties. Not in sharpening the scythe blade when it first becomes less sharp - this simply needs a sharpening stone - but in the process called 'peening,' the more radical attention to the blade which is needed before very long. This requires the use of a special hammer and anvil, or of a peening jig.
The Tank Exchange, www.thetankexchange.com sells a great variety of rain tanks. I have a large rain tank, recycled, with a former industrial use, which holds 1000 litres or a tonne of water. The current cost is about 87.00. It takes the form of a large plastic cube inside a steel cage. It can be carried from the road to an allotment by two people, or, more comfortably, by three or four. The water supply at the allotment site isn't dependable at all times and is turned off in the autumn at a time when tomatoes still need watering. If I go away, the crops in the greenhouse are watered from the tank through seep hoses, which are covered to reduce evaporation. I also have two smaller rain tanks bought from The Tank Exchange which each hold 235litres (55 gallons). They were used to store lemon juice before being recycled. The current cost is about 27.00 each. These tanks are made of much thicker plastic than the unrecycled water butts on sale. They're more durable by far.
Although the large water tank's primary function is, unsurprisingly, storing water, it has a secondary function as well - it forms part of the defences against vandals. I've placed it so that it forms part of the boundary of this allotment. Vandals have caused a great deal of damage in the allotment site and have sometimes acted in groups, pushing over substantial huts. They wrecked the fence, which wasn't a lightweight affair, twice. The water tank is far too heavy for them to push over.
My attitude to technology is quite complex. Of course, gardens and allotments can be worked using only hand tools, of the kind which have been available for centuries. All the structures to be found there can be constructed using hand tools. The purist in me finds these methods very attractive: wherever possible, choose the simpler solution, the solution which uses the least technology. In cooking the produce, and in other kitchen tasks, I only use simpler methods: for example, no microwave, no food processor, kneading bread dough by hand.
Using simpler methods 'wherever possible...' It may not be possible, in many cases. I grew up in an industrial city, and still live there. Not just the acceptance of technology but gratitude for technology, admiration for technology, and for the people who make the products of technology. (Not, however, completely uncritical gratitude and admiration.) Organic growers are aware of the importance of the soil, the importance of the health of the soil, but this should never involve overlooking the importance of technology and manufacturing.
Huge warehouses and huge vehicles and computerized systems are needed to ensure the supply of many of those things which give us the benefits so often taken for granted - and also so often denied. Sophisticated engineering on a massive scale is needed to produce anaesthetics, to make available mains water and take away sewage - and to produce so many of the things I use, and probably you use, in the garden and allotment - products of the oil industry such as hosepipes, plastic water butts (for storing rainwater to reduce dependence on hosepipes and mains water, for making comfrey liquid as a substitute for chemical fertilizer), PVC and polycarbonate sheets - since glass has severe disadvantages in an allotment.
But qualifications are essential, and often severe qualifications. I oppose the mechanical mind which would insist that because many of these things are important, completely indispensable in the modern world, that we have to support every application of technology and the industrial system. Here, I apply the concept I call limitation, just as I apply limitation to the practice of organic growing, if only in one respect (which I explain in the page 'bed and board.') I only use organic methods in clearing weeds from land - black fabric (a product of the oil industry), and flame-weeding (using gas or paraffin which are products of the oil industry), hoeing and hand weeding, both of these practised for millennia.
I don't, in the term I use, practise 'limitation' in other words (put limits, in other words, on the practice of complete, strict organic practice) but Geoff Hamilton felt he had to advocate the use of glyphosate, to practise limitation, in effect: "If your plot is infested with a pernicious weed like bindweed, ground elder or couch-grass, it's absolutely essential to get rid of every scrap of it before you start. If you're in a hurry to get going, there's only one way to do it - weedkiller. Yes, I know that's a dirty word in our language, but this is the one and only concession that I think can be allowed. Spray the lot with glyphosate, a couple of times if necessary, and from then on never let a drop of chemical pass the gate." (The Ornamental Kitchen Garden, Page 48.) It's understandable that someone who is faced with the most intractable weeds should be tempted to use chemicals, should actually use chemicals.
To supply food by means of huge warehouses, huge vehicles and computerized systems, in supermarkets, is idiotic, irrational, disastrous, in large part. Food production and distribution should be local wherever possible - and in many cases it already is possible, and with proper action would be possible to a far, far greater extent. And as for the application of industrial methods to rearing animals, in the unspeakable system of factory farming - the use of huge sheds to confine battery chickens, broiler chickens, pigs - this is a blot upon civilization. Those who say that these methods are necessary to supply large populations are quite simply completely mistaken. There is no necessity. In the supply of food, in the rearing of animals - but these are not the only instances - we ought to practise limitation to technology.
Not many gardening books have anything to say about safety, and yet there are hazards in the garden, as in the home, and even more so in the allotment, particularly derelict allotments full of broken glass and rusting metal. I think it's quite wrong to regard society as too safety conscious. In some areas, this is so (the bureaucratic composting regulations come to mind, although these aren't applicable to the composting techniques I describe in the page on composting.) In some other respects, there's far too little stress upon safety. This is the familiar difficulty in life of 'too much' and 'not enough,' two poles which govern so many of our actions. Regulations may be stifling, irrational, almost psychotic. But complete lack of regulation and advice may be worse.
If you buy a scythe, as I did - I've used it mainly as a very efficient and even exhilarating way to clear brambles from one of the overgrown allotments I took over- you'll receive nothing in the way of safety instructions. The manufacturers of mechanical strimmers and brush cutters aren't nearly so negligent. In the past, when scythes were far more common, the safety precautions were commonly known. From 'The Scythe Book' by David Tresemer: 'When scythes were used more widely, the blades were covered with a bag or custom-made sheath when not in use. In one area of England where scythe covers were not used, the tradition was to march en masse to the field with the blade in the air, the right hand holding the top grip and the lower grip thrust firmly under the right armpit. This regimentation prevented mishaps. In every area, during the break for the midday meal, the scythe blades were laid in the uncut grass or grain, into which no man, woman or child would dare stray, thus protecting blade and flesh. In modern times, these traditions are not known to all...' (Pages 11 - 12. The book rightly treats scythes not as quaint relics from the past but as the completely practical tools they. They're far more graceful and beautiful than strimmers and brush cutters, but also more dangerous, if you're not careful...and you need to be very careful.)
Experienced gardeners will be well aware of the hazards (sometimes because they've learned the hard way, from accidents they've had earlier in their gardening career) but even people who are well aware of them may still have an accident when they're tired, as they often are in the garden and allotment, or when there's a lack of concentration for a few moments. Some people who take up gardening are less safety-conscious than others. So, no apologies whatsoever for focusing attention on potential hazards in the procedures I've outlined in this site, even if all of them may seem to be statements of the obvious.
