kontextmaschine:

Hey, I’m in the mood for something sun-dappled and peaceful, so let’s introduce two of the gardening tools I’ve been using lately.

The first is a dethatching rake. In recovering these yards from broadleaf hell I’ve pulled a ton of weeds, but just as importantly I’ve let friendly grasses grow long to choke them out.

This involves not only grass-blade shade and assertive roots but a mulchy, tangled layer of dead grass and debris called thatch (exactly like the roofing). If this goes too far though – and the mimosa tree out front that drops a blizzard of flowers this time of year doesn’t help, that’s about 12 hours of accumulation in that picture – it can turn the grass into a moisture-trapped, rotting mess. So this rake not only gathers debris from the surface but pulls through the thatch like a comb through tangled hair, loosening it up and pulling out broken strands.

Second is a cultivator mattock – the tines are the cultivator, the thick blade is the mattock, like a pickaxe-hoe – in its native environment, a patch of tree-of-heaven roots. The tree-of-heaven is an invasive fast-growing weed/bush/tree that makes the soil poisonous to other plants, I’ve never seen anything but weeds growing in this patch and until I pull all these roots I doubt anything will.

The stuff poking out of the ground represent maybe one part in five of the woody roots I’ve pulled so far with an estimated 3 parts left down there. The mattock is invaluable in getting down, breaking up big roots, and levering them out, while the cultivator is great at yanking out the dense netting of smaller roots that grows between them. Also indispensable for digging up roots from blackberry and climbing vines, chopping up creeping bamboo rhizomes, and loosening up packed or dry-crusted soil for planting.

So this was the touching-grass hobby I took up and didn’t try to monetize at all that turns out to cast like a half-block wealth buff