Tales of A Nashville Gardener-The World's Best Gardening Tool, The Cape Cod Weeder

In one of my friend's gardens there is a large hackberry tree that rains down berries on the shade garden below. Last season I dug out hundreds of tree babies, then shoveled on mulch, thinking this would solve the seedling problem.

Mulch is a better idea than it is a solution. Sometimes it is a Hail Mary Pass, sometimes an overrated garden fixer. It looks neat(for a while). It makes a garden look as though someone cares. But Bermuda grass tunnels under it, and tree seedlings find it an ideal nursery.

Horrifying it was this spring. to find this shady garden bed nurturing even more little hackberries than it did last year. What good was a hand-held 3 prong cultivator against this little army? Would I need to spend hours picking out every one?

But because I bought a Cape Cod weeder from Amazon, I cleaned up the garden in under ten minutes.

The weeder blade sliced through the mulch and uprooted the weedlings in short order. It saved minutes. It saved hours. Time that is precious-those cool morning gardening hours before the sun takes aim and before the humidity exhausts the gardener.

Today will be over 90 degrees. Tomorrow hotter. And in a few hours I will be heading out to garden tend, keeping my Cape Cod weeder close.

In this particular garden, very close, for the last time I was there, my friend's pack of Sheltie puppies stole the weeder from the wheelbarrow and were about to make off with it. I got it back-minus the rawhide strap one of the heathen Shelties had chewed off.

"They are like monkeys", my friend's husband said ruefully, "They are always up to something mischievous-"