Use of a Garden Hand Cultivator

Digging Small Patches

• Some gardens are micro in size. A few square feet is enough to drop in two or three tomato plants or some spring flowers. A full-sized shovel, hoe or fork does not fit into such a small space. A hand cultivator easily allows the soil to be mixed with compost, fertilizer or other amendments. The three, wide-spaced prongs easily overturns the soil in a small area, giving the micro-garden the proper environment to grow. A hand cultivator also is useful around trees when you want to loosen the soil just a little to help more water and oxygen flow to the roots.

Raking Through Compost

• Finished compost is good for the garden and the soil, but sometimes "finished" is more of a description than a reality. Compost may have twigs, hard stems and even large pieces of rotting material still in it when you are ready to use it. Raking through the compost with a hand cultivator allows you to separate out the material that needs to go into the new compost, giving it a head start with the abundance of bacteria it brings over.

Digging Root Vegetables

• Digging root vegetables from the ground when they don't want to come is a time to work carefully and patiently. Using a shovel or fork works, but often at the expense of many broken potatoes, carrots or beets. Using a hand cultivator with blunted tips allows you to reach under the vegetables and lift them out without fear of poking holes into them. Unlike when using a trowel, most of the soil stays behind in the hole.

Weeding

• Weeds are the bane of most gardeners, and trying to get between mature flowers and vegetable stems with a large tool is impossible. A hand cultivator gives you the ability to reach in with three long prongs and gently dig away at just the right spot. Cultivators with sharpened sides on the prongs reach through the soil and chop away the weed roots without disturbing the plants you want to protect.