Need a hand getting to those awkward weeds? You know the ones, between decking, cracks, rocks and edges that always seem so persistent and just a little too defiant! Well, here’s the Sneeboer Long-Handled Weeding Finger and although equally adept at spot weeding, it also has the versatility that makes for accurate easy drill drawing in a seed bed. The long handle gives that extra bit of reach too (so perfect for raised bed tending or weeding specific areas such as corners or the back of borders). In the Kitchen Garden this Finger gets the ‘thumbs up’ for being such a good ‘helping hand’!
• Ash Wood Handle • 2cm wide by 8cm deep blade/finger • Overall Tool Length – 166cm
Work to rule! Keep your seeds on the straight and narrow with this very useful Sneeboer long handled hoe-type tool. Perfect for creating long, even furrows for sowing or planting seedlings and thereby achieving better regularity of planting for more aesthetic results in the bed/border.
On the home front - Needless to say, friends and neighbours come up with various queries and problems, some of which I feel are worth airing here. My neighbour Nessie, undoubtedly the star of Round Oak allotments where she cuts a mean furrow, had a smallholding in Romania before she settled in Wadhurst. There the universal cultivating tool is something that slightly resembles an onion hoe, but which has a pointed triangular head – excellent for everything, she says, from hacking at lumpy soil to weeding between rows to creating fine drills for seed planting. Many moons ago she asked me if such an implement is available in this country. I trawled around on the internet and leafed through my catalogues and brochures and came up with nothing. Then at Chelsea Flower Show this year I saw what I assumed is the very thing she is looking for. Made by Sneeboer, the makers of traditional Dutch tools beloved by many; it is a new thing called a long-handled rulemaker hoe. It looks fantastic and is, Nessie agrees, the very thing she has been looking for. Thorny Problems with Helen Yemm, Daily Telegraph, 13 June 15, 2009