Garden Fork

Breaking new ground, removing sod, tilling the garden by hand... These are heavy duty gardening jobs and a good tool will make all the difference. If you have lovely, fluffy soil, from years of amending it, then you can go straight to the compost fork and by-pass the macho garden fork. If not, find a garden fork you're comfortable with and start digging.

A garden fork, spading fork, digging fork or grip is a gardening implement, with a handle and several (usually four) short, sturdy tines. It is used for loosening, lifting and turning over soil in gardening and farming. It is used similarly to a spade, but in many circumstances it is more appropriate than a spade: the tines allow the implement to be pushed more easily into the ground, it can take out stones and weeds and break up clods, it is not so easily stopped by stones, and it does not cut through weed roots or root-crops. Spading forks were originally made of wood, but the majorities are now made of carbon steel or stainless steel.

I've also listed a compost fork, although you can get away with using your garden fork for turning compost. But once again, the right tool can make the job easier.

Garden Spading Fork
It's called a spading fork, because both tools are used for digging and aerating soil. Personally, I find it much easier to use a fork, especially in compacted or rocky soil. The head is one piece, heavy-duty forged steel with 4 angular back tines, so the soil should budge before the tines bend.

Compost Fork
At the other end of the garden fork world there's the compost fork. Compost may happen, but it happens faster if you turn it periodically. You could use a regular garden fork for this, but compost forks have thinner tines that are more widely spaced and curved, so that chunky material doesn't get stuck in the tines and loose material remains cupped and contained. Once you try a compost fork, you learn to appreciate them.

Garden forks are slightly different from pitchforks, which are used for moving piled hay, compost, or manure. Garden forks have comparatively fairly short, usually wooden handle, with a "D" or "T" end. Their tines are usually shorter, flatter, thicker, and more closely spaced.

A smaller version of such forks with shorter, closer-spaced, thinner tines (but a full-sized handle) is known as a border fork or ladies' fork, and is used for lighter work such as weeding amongst other plants. Forks with broader, flatter tines are made for lifting potatoes and other root crops from the ground. A pair of forks back-to-back is often used to lever apart dense clumps of roots.