Small triangular hoe with longish metal stem attached to a slim handle. Very hard to find around here. This is the best picture I could find.
Doesn't look too hard to make, but I would need a better picture of the attachment point for the blade, and the diameter of the handle you want to use.
This is my "Least Favorite Hoe" Growing up in AZ high school summer jobs(1960s) were hard to find. So to help make gas and beer money, we did what it took. Get up at 2AM and drive 80-120 miles to the cotton fields SE of the PHX area. On the fields by 430 when It was light enough that you could see the rattlesnakes so you would not step on them Work in 115 Deg temps, sometimes in wet muddy irrigated fields so humidity was 100%, we would hoe weeds until 430-5PM Mon-Fri for $1.25/hr cash money paid everyday. We had to buy our own hoe and always carried a Mill Bastard to keep it sharp. The sharper they were the faster you could work. We bought the hoes from a local farmer/blacksmith who made them for the field hands. Cost $10. It was backbreaking work. The field boss would walk the rows behind you to make sure you were not cutting cotton plants, only weeds. I dont own a hoe anymore,...... for some reason......my back hurt when I pick one up I did buy my wife a "Hula Hoe"
I don't know the right name for the hoe that looks like a small version of the push hoe with a wheel that has 6 or so tines that come down and end in a shovel like end that stirs the dirt rather than cutting off the weeds. It may be more of a plow like thing. You use it to break up the crust and bring up the moisture or at least that was the old belief and it seems to work. My grand father used his shoeing forge to bend a rod and flatten it and rivited a section from a mower on it, drilled a hole in a hoe handle, took a piece of copper pipe for a ferrel, and made a small very handy hoe for cutting weeds next to the plant, Yard sale sturrip hoe for about $5 is the same as the one shown for $50 + at Johnies seed. Whole groups of hoes and uses out there. Small triangle ones make nice furrows to plant in, sturrip and thin wide ones are nice for cutting weeds on surface and not bringing up new weed seeds to grow, finger and wide thick ones to prep the soil and get ready for raking, kind of like disking a field, wide ones for hilling potato's, corn,etc and making hills to plant. I can't say I have one favorite hoe. They were developed to meet a specific need and each is best suited for that need. You take the cotton hoe and slash at the soil to loosen it and pull it up in hills around your corn or potatoes, you take the sturrip hoe to cut off weeds in the row and between the roes, you take a small thin or triangle hoe to get the weeds right next to the plant or to make fine furrows, each has its own use and if you are going to garden with hand tools, you are going to need several different hoes. You can stumble along with one and get by, bit it would be like trying to cook with only a skillet, isn't really the best way to make soup or coffee. Love the picture of chopping cotton, being a "northerner" we chopped corn, but same type of thing. The hoes were large, heavy, and you got sore hands and backs. Ever now and then we would run into a nest of ground bees, not snakes, and that could ruin a couple of hours until the stinging stopped. Grand dad took the end that went into the handle and flattened it slightly and put into the handle like a rake, sometimes drove it in, sometimes fastened it with a rivit made from a nail. I expect the rivited ones were drilled fter the driven ones fell out.
^^^^ This, @hot diggity Haven't seen one in years, but very handy. Thanks for jogging the memory...I'm gonna have to make one now. I've never seen one in the shops here.
@GrayGhost Back in the day the local welding/blacksmith/tinkerer made them from old sickle mower blades(teeth) and rebar/rod welded or driven into about any handle or broken hoe or whatever was around. They work great around young plants and not as tiring as a chopping hoe.
At the sure and certain risk of derision, my favorite hoe is in someone else's hands. I'm already well enough practiced.
I live in a farming community...parts are easy to come by. It helps that I have a full fab shop at my disposal.
Exactly what my grand dad did oldawg, he also made us sleds, fishing sinkers and everything else we wanted. Welded and used his forge well into his eighties.
Best of both worlds. There is a local weed, very noxious, called Alder. Needs bit more work.... Off the property, very 'green. Once it gets a foot hold, you are in for some work....
No Laugh... That is how we build gardens in Bush Alaska, if you happen to have a machine in the neighborhood...
