Spading Fork: What professionals say. With Helpful Tips

As a dedicated gardener or a weekend hobbyist, you know that working with the right tools can make your life a lot easier. A spading fork is an essential gardening tool for you to have. Whether you need to dig or aerate soil, transport compost or hay or take away weeds, a spading fork is what you need.

Spading Fork:

A spading fork is a robust gardening tool designed for digging without harming the roots of plants and is also used for turning and aerating the soil. A good quality spading fork maintained well can last very long, and it is one of the more versatile tools you can own as a gardener.

In this article, I will explain what a spading fork is and where it is used. I will also look at hand forks and some other garden tools.

What is spading fork used for?

A spading fork is a fork with four to six flat tines with no curvatures. It is also known as a digging fork, and its primary function is digging. When digging into compacted clay, or rocky soil, a spading fork is a tool you want to use instead of a pitchfork or compost fork.

Cut through soil

The spading fork’s powerful tines can cut through tough soils that a spade might find challenging. Before digging with a spade, the ground can be “dug” up or loosened up with a spading fork. Using a spading fork will ease the strain on your body in any case.

I recommend using a robust, well-built spading fork if you’re utilizing it for demanding tasks. A spading fork constructed out of steel is always a good option. Usually, the fork part and the actual tines are made of steel, while the handles and shaft are from wood or fiberglass. This makes the tool relatively lightweight. Spading fork handles can be D-shaped, T-shaped, or simply a long shaft with no particular handle. Spading fork shafts also exist in a variety of lengths.

Dig up plants

A spading fork can also be used to dig up plants with strong and massive roots. These could be weedy patches or garden plants you want to divide or replant. The tines of spading forks can remove more roots than a spade can because they cause less damage to the root structures. This lessens the stress of transplanting garden plants and lets you completely remove the weeds’ roots and prevent their regrowth.

A spading fork is the best instrument for digging out plants to divide, pot up, or transplant to another location. When a plant is too large for one fork, two gardeners, each carrying a fork, dig in from opposite sides before lifting and pulling a challenging specimen out.

A spading fork is essential for perennials, succulents, and other plants that are in rocky soil or have soft, fleshy roots. The fork can be used to carefully lift and carry a perennial to another location for potting or replanting.

The spading fork is the main equipment used in raised bed gardening to mix soils and churn the ground with compost for rejuvenation. I always recommend using a spading fork when creating gardens and taking care of yard work. Purchase the sturdiest tines you can locate since plants must be pulled out of the root bed with a lot of force. Keep an eye on the handle connection because flimsy ones will fall apart where the tines’ stems are connected with the handle.

I also recommend selecting the fork that is comfortable for your body type. For instance, utilizing a spading fork with a shorter handle will be simpler if you are short, and a longer shaft will also ease the strain on your back if you are tall. Some tools can be adjusted, but ensure they are sturdy and last forever.

What is the difference between a spading fork and a garden fork?

The largest of the family of forks, the garden fork is effective when working on large areas. These robust tools are excellent for demanding activities like preparing new soil for a garden or breaking up stubborn soil. Double digging and soil aeration are two other uses for garden forks, and they are extremely helpful if your soil is compacted or heavy with clay.

The spading fork, also known as the digging fork, is a relative of the garden fork and is employed for root vegetable harvesting and digging or turning over lighter soil types. Digging forks often have four tines, just like garden forks do.

What is a hand fork used for?

A hand fork is a small, handheld gardening tool for seedlings or small plants. Hand forks are commonly called “weeding forks” since they are frequently used to pull weeds.

It is a smaller variant of the spading fork, about the size of a garden trowel. Hand forks typically have a wooden, plastic, or metal grip and three strong, pointed tines (prongs). Hand forks are used for various gardening tasks, including aerating the soil and cultivation. They are also employed in transplanting seedlings and light weeding.  The tool’s compact size makes it particularly helpful for working in tight areas like containers, borders, or beds with dense plant life.

Most hand forks have tines, which are three-pointed prongs informally referred to as tines. These are utilized for groundbreaking and typically will be flat or rounded. For weeding or transplanting plants and flowers, hand forks with flat tines are excellent tools. It will be simpler to aerate the soil with circular tines if you plan to do this before planting.

What is a garden trowel?

A garden trowel is a small portable handheld spade or shovel. Garden trowels often feature metal handles that are covered in rubber, plastic, or wood. The shovel portion of a garden trowel can be made of various metals or plastic; the metal blades are occasionally coated or painted.

These handheld shovels have sizes ranging from one to five inches (2.5 to 12.7 cm) across. Although some widths are preferable for particular jobs, the choice of width is a matter of personal preference. Garden trowels can also have scoop-shaped, flat, or even curved blades.

Depending on your situation, I recommend that trowel blades must be cleaned, sterilized, and dried after using them. This may look unnecessary, but like pruners, contaminated garden trowels can transfer diseases from one plant to another.

To keep Garden trowels last for a long time, I recommend storing them indoors throughout the winter. When not used, hanging up garden trowels is the ideal storage method. The handle of the majority of garden trowels has a hole for hanging.

With garden trowels, you can dig tiny holes for perennials, annuals, or bulbs. Using a garden trowel to dig a hole for a tree or shrub would be time-consuming and labor-intensive. Weeds can also be removed with garden trowels.

A blade with a short width will function better in small, constrained spaces to dig weeds or sow little plants or bulbs. Long taproot weeds respond better to flat trowel blades. Wider trowel blades and scoop-shaped blades are ideal for digging up small plants, making holes for perennials, or scooping up soil when potting plants.

How do spade and trowel differ?

A spade is similar to a shovel, but its handle is slightly shorter than most shovels. This tool is used to dig deep holes and trenches, and it is a good choice when working with hard ground, clay soil, heavy dirt, digging a small ditch, or planting larger plants or tiny shrubs.

Spades are also useful for removing grass from a location. This may be the case when you’re preparing a new garden plot or caring for a neglected gardening space. Additionally, applying a lot of compost to your garden can benefit your plants.

A trowel is a handheld tool. This tool has a pointed scoop with a small handle attached to it. It is applied while digging up little plants, and it is frequently employed to scoop dirt into a pot. You would use a trowel when working in softer soil, such as when planting in a container garden. An example would be using it when soil is so soft that even your hands can move it.

Why use a fork and not a spade?

The fork’s powerful tines can more easily penetrate problematic soils than a spade, which is the primary benefit of employing one over the other. The fork breaks up the ground on stony terrain so that a spade can be used to dig it out. You might be able to use the fork to both loosen and dig out the dirt on clumping clay soils.

The fork’s tines will cause little or no damage to root structures, which is the second benefit of utilizing it over a spade. Important while harvesting roots since you want to break up the soil without destroying your plants. Additionally, using a fork to transplant will help you remove more healthy roots than a spade because it will soften the soil, and your plant will be able to establish itself in the new location more quickly.

Last but not least, weeding calls for using a fork rather than a spade. You can remove all the roots with a fork to prevent their regrowth.

Choosing the right fork

There are a lot of forks out there, and each type is best suited for specific functionality. Let’s look at you which fork to use when:

● Garden Fork:

You want a garden fork if your soil is undisturbed, clay-based, or tough. It has four long, incredibly sturdy tines with sharp tips at the ends for easy soil penetration. The best garden forks have a riveted socket or a strapped handle connection and are made of a single piece of carbon steel. Excellent for double digging, breaking up even the roughest soils, and, if necessary, digging up root crops.

● Spading Fork:

A spading fork often weighs a little less and features four triangular tines with a flat facing the fork’s front for lifting. These forks are useful for digging in loamy, sandy, or loose soil, aerating, incorporating nutrients, turning your soil in the spring, and harvesting potatoes and other root vegetables thanks to their flat-faced tines.

● Border Fork:

A border fork is a smaller version of the standard garden fork. These border forks are tough gardening tools despite their diminutive size and are great for working in confined spots like raised beds and between plantings. For smaller areas, it will be a less-exhausting garden fork.

● Pitchfork:

A pitchfork, also known as a compost fork, typically has four long, thin, pointed tines that are slightly angled upward to scoop or move loose material without bending. Excellent for moving loose items or rotating your compost pile.

Notably, many “compost forks” are too light and can’t support the weight of heavy compost, thus, many gardeners choose to use a heavy-duty garden fork. Manure forks resemble compost forks but aren’t meant to lift big loads.

● Broad fork:

The two-handled broad fork performs many of the same tasks as a standard garden fork but on a larger scale. The broad fork is typically used to rework land that has already been broken up. It often features two hardwood handles fitting around shoulder width on a horizontal steel bar and four to six long tines. This tool can help to finish your job real quick.

Should I choose the cheapest fork?

Most of these garden forks are available in various price ranges, just like most other gardening tools. The robust and solid forged tools might look more expensive, but as they can last considerably longer, they might be cheaper in the long run. The strength, and quality, can make them last so long that you can pass on these tools to the next generations.