I swear I’ve done more gardening at our new homestead than I’ve done everywhere I’ve ever lived, my entire life (lawn mowing excluded). Holy hole digging Cat Woman!
Our little suburban house was surrounded by the builder with this treacherous and may I say noxious plant called St. Augustine grass, and to top it off all the construction equipment, rolling back and forth has made for some VERY, VERY compacted soil.
When we moved in my Aunt gifted me all the garden tools in her shed. Lots of tools. I was so grateful. Then I needed to ‘dig in’. Oh boy.
When I put my first tree in, it took me about an hour. I mean I know I’m not young, but still I was overwhelmed at how frickin’ hard it was to put in one tree – and I want more! This is going to be a forever project.
Nevertheless, I persisted (*wink*) and kept planting and YES it is hard. And for a few weeks we had no rain. There’s a place back in the meadow that was so hard to dig into, I finally gave up and created a raised bed around the beauty berry bush seedling. SIGH.
In my YouTube journey I stumbled upon a video about sharpening your loppers — which lead to a video, truth be told, many videos, about sharpening your garden tools – like shovels and hoes.
Ohhhhh Emmmmm Geeeee
This was the stuff that gardening dreams are made of.
So I bought myself a vise, attached it to my work table, and dug in the tool box as the videos called for a ‘bastard’ file, no kidding, that’s what is called. Turns out I had one in the tool box with the symbol BD on it.
BEST. LESSON. EVER!
I sharpened the shovel after watching a few videos – and VOILA and after a few short minutes I had a shovel that could chop through that St. Augustine – lickety split! The next hole I needed was just a few minutes to break through — and it got easier after that.
So the best lesson — and the best advice I have for you — work with sharpened garden tools. It will save your time, energy, and sanity.
This is one of the videos that really helped me move things forward https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn8npWqkCa8
What tips do you have for new gardeners?