Do Scythes Make Sense in Market Gardens + The Garden Tools You Will Use

Hey nerds, Farmer Jesse here, welcome to Girls Daily, your Daily Dose of Ecological

Farming Insight.

It is Tuesday, March 24th, 2026, and today we are having a tool day.

We're going to discuss sides and hand sides, and if they're worth it, and then we will

revisit a few old segments, including which tools you should buy first, weeding gear, and

the tools that make it easier from an interview with the great Aaron Whirl, so let's do it.

Alright, everyone, welcome to Tilt Tuesday, your weekly reminder that you can get living

soil compost and potting mixes from the bonafide nerds over there at Tilt Soil.

Check out Nathan on the compost or podcast season 4 episode 3, or head to tiltsoil.com to

learn more.

I hope everyone is doing well this fine Tuesday.

Obviously, the voices still not quite back, but we're getting there slowly but surely.

And so we're going to do a hybrid episode, but first we're going to talk a little bit

about just what's going on here, which is the temperatures they are going on, they're

going on up and then on down and then on up again, just kind of how it rolls and, you

know, March or so they say, the work is starting to pick up a little bit around here, starting

seeds, mowing pathways, potting up plants, getting plants in the ground, and then kind of

rinse and repeat, sometimes literally rinse, lots of rain.

It's the spring.

That's how it rolls.

Definitely one of the more wild times of year to be a farmer because the weather is just

all over the place, at least in the summer, you kind of know it's just going to be hot

and dry.

In the spring, it's anyone's guess.

It could be hot dry.

It could be something new, tire like completely novel.

Anyway, as we head into the growing season here or out of the growing season there in

the southern hemisphere, send your 22nd farm video clips to farmremikingnoteilgrows.com,

love to see and share those.

All right.

So every Tuesday, I like to do a bit of a tool focus this week.

I want to talk about sides and hand sides plus sickles, although people usually use those

terms interchangeably.

The difference between a side and a sickle is largely shape and goals.

Sickles are generally shaped more like an apostrophe, whereas sides, including hand sides,

are shaped more like half-heart, which is kind of sweet if you think about it, just like

this.

Those sides and sickles can technically be used to mo or harvest.

Sides are typically used for mowing, whereas sickles are typically associated with harvesting.

Indeed, you will find sickle harvesting knives out there and they can be really good for

things like lettuces and cabbages, etc.

Whereas hand sides can be a little tricky and frankly a little dangerous to harvest with

as the blade sort of points back at the user, which is not ideal.

Regular sides, as in those with long handles, called the snaith, that's what the handle

is, that you use standing up, have a lot of variations as well.

There are a few different blade and snaith styles, that's a fun sentence to say.

That range from size for cutting grass neatly to the size for hacking down some dang

brain balls.

I think that's the technical terminology there.

So anyway, several years ago, I bought a side and a hand side from an aptly named place

called the sidesupply.com, which is a great resource to be honest and has helpful guides for

how to buy all of this stuff for your body and fit your goals, notably not a sponsor.

And I've realized some important things about using these tools in the garden.

One, I thought the big side I own would come in a lot handier than it actually does for

me.

It's a great and well-made tool, don't get me wrong.

I just don't end up using it very much.

For instance, for managing cover crops, I envisioned in certain circumstances I would be able

to either use it to cut a cover crop down to the ground like a sickle bar mower would.

That notably looks nothing like a sickle, which I think is not an important note, but is

at least an observation, or simply mow them really high and then you sort of let the cover

crop regrow from there, just replicating like grazing.

And to a certain extent, I can do that, but a couple things.

One, the side is set for my height, like my full height, so mowing up high is just a

little bit awkward to hold the whole thing up really high and like on the back and the

shoulders.

Mowing the crop at ground level, although it does take some time, does work.

But the thing that is, I guess it's like easy to overlook with the side, it is really

meant for taking pretty wide swings.

So when you're working on a bed-by-bed basis, it can be a little bit awkward to keep

the side from hitting the bed beside you or behind you.

Not impossible to do, just, it's a little bit awkward and you're using a lot more muscle

to control it when you're doing small sections, then you're required to when you're using

it on a wide angle because you're swinging so wide.

That the side actually does a lot of the work for you.

In that way, there are times when it works and then there are times when the situation

is a little too tight to really feel comfortable using the side and not hit the bed on either

side of me.

A learning curve also exists with this tool where you need a pretty ample amount of time

to get used to it and find a good rhythm to make it efficient, but it's kind of hard

to find enough work for it for me to do that.

Could I be mowing all of my grass and pastures with it to get that practice, sure I could,

but not really if I also want to have any time to farm or hang out with my family.

And yes, I've definitely seen the videos where someone pairs the side against a mower,

but do that over multiple acres and it's just really not a contest.

The mower will win every single time unless it, of course, breaks down, but people break

down too and need rest, especially like siding in the heat.

I am hopeful I will have more work for it in coming years in places like my orchards.

That's been a weird place to manage with mowers because they're old garden beds so they're

sort of like mounted and it's difficult to get a mower in there efficiently, especially

for what the lower parts of the mounds.

In the garden, however, I'm just not finding a ton of use for the side.

The hand side, however, I find that comes in handy on many occasions from harvesting

ornary corn stalks to killing tomato plants at the end of the season to even taking down

the tomato trellis.

And then also, you know, efficiently cutting the plant from its roots.

You do have to be quite careful with both of these tools and keep them sharp, but of

course, you know, also well out of the hands of the reach of kids.

That's important.

My garden is a specific thing though.

So I'd be curious to hear how you all have found the use of size, hand side, sickles,

et cetera in your gardens.

Let us know and otherwise we're going to take a quick break and keep this tool train moving

through.

That's like too, too, but it put it out at the end.

I think people probably got that part.

I didn't need to explain it.

Yarby.

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All right, back to the show.

Today's first Patreon question comes from Patreon member Gasper Mestus, who writes quote,

Hello, I am brand new to farming and will attempt to do dry farming.

We are on half an acre, but our small house lives in the middle of it.

We live in the high desert southwest, given a budget of a few hundred dollars.

What should I focus on for tools and equipment?

I know there was a comprehensive tool video, but I wasn't able to determine the hierarchy

of what should come first and quote.

Okay, so great question and obviously some of this will depend on the scale you would

like to grow on and the current condition of the soil and your markets and those sorts

of things, but I will give you what I personally would look at first.

So I did a show about the parts of a farm to invest in back in December, November.

I think it was like in the 50s of this show, so whatever that would have been, I'll find

it and put it in the show notes.

And there's also a thread at the no till growers forum on this exact subject that will help

as well.

Those will give you some good guidelines for what to think about when it comes to what

you're going to purchase for each specific part of farming.

I guess next, you probably need to think about some soil prep stuff.

I've often said I could run my farm on a trowel, a good shovel, a rake, a stirrup hoe,

and a wheelbarrow.

And I pretty much stand by that.

I mean, it's not the most efficient, but you could get by pretty far for pretty long

that way.

And sure, it's nice to have a few tools and options like a broad fork and maybe a

tilther and different sizes of types of hose, a gritter.

I love my gritter, but just those few things will get you pretty far to start.

For harvest, a knife and some totes is a fine starting point as well.

Not sure if you're going to be selling the produce.

It sounds like you're starting a farm, but if so, you'll have to think about washing and

packing.

For washing, staying on the bare minimum front, get a large food safe wash tote and a

couple of hoses.

You will also need a way to dry the produce.

So some sort of drying rack as well, either build yourself for prefab, though prefab

will likely be more expensive.

If you're drawing greens, you can convert an old washing machine to a salad spinner or

buy one of those hand cranked ones, but those are less effective and can be more expensive.

I've heard of people using mesh food safe bags and spinning those over their heads, like

literally just like, I don't know, like a slang to dry the greens as a low-fi solution.

I have never tried that, but for a small amount of greens, sure.

For 50 or 100 pounds, that would be a lot of work, it would be a lot of spinning.

You'd get really strong, but it'd be a lot of spinning.

For cooling on a small scale, you can get pretty far with a large refrigerator or two,

or buy a cool bot and ace unit and just shove them in an unused closet or something, or

just freeze bottles of water and use those to cool off large hunting coolers.

We have these large coolers that we bring to market and we just use frozen water bottles

in there to kind of keep them cool through the day.

Now, if you do plan to sell, you'll need to think about not only what you plan to pack

the vegetables into, but marketing equipment as well, so like tents and tables, et cetera.

You will need a scale also.

Tools and equipment wise, that's a good list to start with.

Obviously, there are things like seeders and mowing equipment that you'll need,

any sort of seed starting stuff, you know, that just depending on if you want to buy

your plants to start or if you want to start them yourself.

I really recommend going through that post at the forum and kind of just taking notes

as you go to each individual part of farming.

So yeah, tools and equipment wise, that's a pretty good list to start with.

As you can see, it's unfortunately not as simple as just buy these few things, because

like I've said before, starting a farm is like not just starting a business, but starting

a business that also produces the raw ingredients for what it sells, which most businesses do

not begin there.

I mean, many businesses don't ever get there.

Most businesses outsource their sort of widget production, buying in things they need

to make their product.

Not us.

We grow the widgets.

We do it all, everything from production to marketing, farming is a bonkers business

in that way.

Again, I know I harp on these things a lot, but there is no easy way to break into this

business with no or low capital, but it is, you know, it's possible.

It's just a lot of work.

We did it.

It sucked, but it definitely can be done if you're willing to put the energy into it and

willing to start somewhere low and have a goal of what you need each step along the way.

Now, if you're just trying to garden and maybe slowly move into farming, you can totally

do it for pretty cheap and slowly acquire more as you grow.

I also cannot emphasize enough how valuable it is to just do an enterprise budget and write

out the crops you want to grow, like what you'll, each crop that you're planning to grow,

and then what you will need for each of those and how much it will cost both upfront and

annually to produce each one individually, and then all of them together, treat the farm

like a business because that is exactly what it is, even if it is also, you know, so much

more than that.

A great question and best of luck.

I hope I was at least a little bit helpful.

Our final Patreon question of the day comes to us from Alex Lighty.

Who asks, hey there, I've been tuning into Grover's Daily Podcast and thoroughly enjoying

it.

It's weeding season, so I have a question.

Any opinions on weeding knives?

I have been working with some migrant workers that are exceptional growers, and they love

to use fixed blade knives for weeding around sensitive crops like garlic, berry, celery,

et cetera, using the knife to pry deeply rooted, established weeds, and then scrape the surface

of the soil to kill smaller weeds, though I have 10 years of growing experience.

This is new to me.

Though it's slightly time consuming, the bed comes out really nice.

In general, what is your weeding gear and do you ever incorporate knives?

In quote, all right, that's a super fun question here, Alex.

My preferred weeding gear is mulch, but the truth is that I still have plenty of places

on the farm that occasionally need cultivation because I try a lot of different low and

no mulch sort of techniques, so I have a lot of experience to advise people who don't

have access to a lot of mulch.

And sometimes I fail to mo my living pathways in time to make sure life is never dull.

But I also have years of experience working on a tillage farm, so I have no shortage of

cultivation hours logged in thoughts on the subject.

So I will do a total weeding tool rundown and then focus a bit more on your specific

question.

The first thing I will say is that my favorite weeding tool is a seropo, sometimes called

a hula ho.

I want to do as much of my weeding standing up as humanly possible as I'm sure you do.

Think of this tool like a swinging blade, like a hoop almost on the bottom of a long

handle that can go forward and backward to cultivate while keeping your back straight.

I used to use a colinear a hoe for years, but you know, on the advice of several growers

of the time.

But the seropo is just significantly more efficient with less work in my experience.

The one trade off is that the seropo is sharper and will kill more plants if you goof,

like if you just hit a rock and then just accidentally slam into that plant and it is gone,

which is probably why these workers are carefully weeding up against the plant with knives,

but we'll get to that.

For the pathways, again, if mulch is not the option, things like a wheel hoe are probably

the most efficient, though that is a ton of work on your shoulders.

I generally use a large seropo, but for larger market gardens, that's going to be inadequate.

The wheel hoe and then the next step up would be like the tractor cultivators.

That's really going to be the best thing for your pathways.

We're digging up rooted perennials, like you were talking about with a knife.

I have a nice trowel from Johnny's that I love, but I have also used our harvest knife.

I have an old harvest knife that I'll talk about in a second, but usually I like to bust

out that trowel if I have the time.

Alex wrote a reply to this question that they said they picked up a Hori, Hori, which

is also a really good option.

It's just kind of a sort of like a trowel, but like a knifey trowel.

If it's a really big plant, like a well established, I don't know, doc root or something, then

this spade shovel is the ticket for me.

I have a really nice spade from Ace of Spades, I think is what it's called.

I do have a pocket knife for a farmer that's a tool that is common as a hat, I guess, but

I do not use it in the dirt so much, but I will use one of our old harvest knives around

plants as well, not always because you said it's kind of time consuming to do that, but

in terms of accuracy, especially with like sensitive plants or plants that are high value

and very long lived, that's the way to go, and I'll bet there are better knives than what

I use.

I just kind of use that old harvest knife because it's around.

Alex also wrote in that follow up quote, I have settled on a butcher's skinning and ribbing

knife with a round of five inch blade for smaller weeds.

It has a unique shape that is great for cutting under just the soil surface.

Those two knives live in the same sheath because soil dulls blade so quickly, I quickly

touch them up daily.

For the same reason, I keep a third knife strictly for harvest that never touches the dirt.

We of course use standard implements in the field with larger crops.

I should say that I am mostly using knives in our house where we inner plant and space

tight end quote, and yeah, that was my thought.

I wouldn't use the pocket knife for soil work because the dirt would absolutely dull it,

but I can definitely see in a tight sort of spacing or in an inner plant, like you said,

how a small precision cultivation tool like a knife comes in really, really handy.

Although absolutely, I prefer to take care of weeds with mulch, tarps, and occasional

flame weeder maybe.

There are also just an unending number of cultivation tools out there that have come up in the

last decade from time rake weeders and various rolling cultivators that gently weed in

around plants that could be explored on larger scales.

There are also tractor implements like finger weeders as you get into larger, larger scales.

Weeds do happen.

So it's good to have an array of tools in the, well, this time it's kind of the literal

toolbox to help out.

I mean, I certainly wouldn't recommend that I'm sure Alex agrees with this using like

that boning knife, for instance, on a large scale, but around a handful of precious plants

it's certainly effective.

Anyway, that's my go to cultivating tool setup and my thoughts on cultivation tools in general.

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All right.

Back to the show.

All right.

So, Aaron, when you're farming solo, you have to be obviously like really smart about

your time and efficiency.

So I'm curious, tool wise, what are some things that have been super helpful for that?

Some of the things that have like done the trick for you in that department and maybe

some that you kind of wish you had.

Yeah.

The most obvious easiest answer for me is the Jane Cedar.

I did not have it.

My first year of production and I hand-seated every single thing that went into the field,

every carrot, every radish, and it would take me a couple of hours to plant a single

bed of carrots because I didn't want to have to come back and thin it so I was spacing

them out.

And then I invested in the Jane year too and I literally cried the first time that

I planted a bed of carrots in like four minutes.

I couldn't believe how much time I had wasted doing that.

So I think for me, the Cedar has been far and away the biggest time saver, most efficient

thing.

I also think this is not entirely a tool, but my high tunnels, I mean, they made such

a difference in the productivity of the farm.

They cut down on pest pressure.

I do a better job keeping things weeded because they're just like mentally in their own

space and I was able to, I built kind of a DIY one second year, but I've been fortunate

enough to have an NRCS grant every year since I'm up to five tunnels now.

And I would say doing it by myself, it was incredible to have these like smaller pockets

of space to mentally manage.

But also now that I have employees, it's also, that's an efficiency and kind of an organization

of the farm that has helped a ton because you can do everything from like trellis your

cuks in your tomatoes better than you can in the field to throwing up exclusionary netting

on certain crops.

It's really been a huge labor and time saver for me to have these like enclosed growing

areas.

Yeah, yeah, there's so much, I mean, there's so many benefits to it and it just makes

so many things easier.

Is there, is there anything that you're thinking now that you would really like to have or

maybe even have somebody invent what's like what's missing on your farm right now in terms

of tools?

I think they're invented, but what's missing for me is a better, more efficient washback

setup.

That's something that I am still sort of bootstrapping and can waste a lot of time and

feel just sort of obnoxious to do when you don't feel like you have the right tools.

So things like a root washer rather than hand spraying every bunch of carrots with the

hose would be so lovely, a bigger, you know, salad greens, bubbler stuff that can just

move things in faster quantities.

Those are the things I could really start to benefit from.

Yeah, I think that's an area that's really easy to have bottlenecks.

Yeah, because I think it gets under designed for every but for all of us because you're

like, I need to grow food.

I can figure the rest out later because that's what I did.

That's what we did.

Yeah.

And then you get it to the wash pack and you're like, all right, well, at first I'm just

going to use these buckets that I have and then you buy like a hand spinner for your

salad.

You know, whatever in this, but that becomes a very significant portion of your time is

spent just literally washing and packing things.

Yeah.

It also makes such a huge, oh, sorry, no, no, go ahead.

It also just makes such a huge difference in the quality of your product.

You know, like the length of time that your salad mix can last is greatly impacted by

how well you processed it.

And that comes down to like customer satisfaction.

It really does matter a lot.

One question I had in regards to the the jang, you mentioned that being like just, you

know, completely a game changer for you.

Did you in anywhere in that period try the earth way either because I get this question

a lot like is the jang a necessity over the earth way or you just kind of went straight

to the to the jang?

I went straight to the jang.

People ask me that question all the time too.

I have never used another cedar.

I just heard enough experienced growers that I really admired their operations saying this

is the one that you're going to wish that you had and it's worth it.

And so rather than kind of making this smaller investment before working my way up, I was

like, I'm just going to do what I want at the beginning.

Yeah.

It's funny because your story of going from like hand-seating to, you know, crying, pushing

the jang is it rings like that's the story I'm always telling people that I didn't necessarily

go directly from because we kind of when I started learning how to farm, I had, you

know, the farmer that I was working for had the earth way and stuff.

So I kind of had experience with that and then I definitely could see how much better or

more, you know, efficient, more easier to push all those things that the jang was than

the earth way.

But I didn't have necessarily that experience of going from like literally hand-seating

a bit of carrots to pushing the jang through which would have been incredible.

So yeah, I mean, I think that's a, that's nice to have that anecdote to be able to tell

people, but also like there are tools like that and that you experience like you're going

through something you're cultivating or you're seeding or whatever and it's very slow.

And there are tools that can improve that process, but there is some value to having

gone through at the hard way to begin with, I think.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I thought of one other thing that I would love to have.

Sure.

And I'm thinking about, so philosophically, right, when you're farming solo so much of

your farm can just become your life.

And I think as I've become a healthier person who is also a farmer, who also forms at my

home, it's been as my mind has changed about like separating my farm business from me as

an individual and like creating some distinction there.

And so one thing that I'm working on this year is moving my farm transport out of my personal

vehicle.

And so I would say like some kind of van or trailer or something that belongs to the farm

business.

And I don't have to unload like all of my market tables and signage and packaging and

everything out of my car so I can drive my kids to soccer, you know, like every week.

That is such a mental slog for me and it feels like it's encroaching at all times.

There's micro green seeds all over the floor of the van because I've spilled so many

trays in there.

And so yes, that's one thing that's missing that I think will make a really big difference

to me, just in quality of life and like mental sustainability.

That's an interesting one, one, I appreciate that you're taking them to soccer.

But to the, you know, I think people maybe don't realize that you can get a loan for like

we got ours through ag credit for a Honda Odyssey that we used for the van for the just

exclusively for the, for the farm because that was the perfect fit for us for the amount

of produce we were taking.

We could fit about $2,000 worth of produce in one of those vans because they're so well

designed and you just take out the seats or whatever and they run forever.

So it turned out that we were able to get that loan for like basically a family van through

the ag credit to be able to use for the farm, which, you know, I don't know.

Some people probably think about van, I don't know what kind of van you got and some people

may think, I need a sprinter, I need one like one of these, you know, like larger whatever

vans.

And I think maybe eventually a lot of people will, but you know, there is also that option

of getting like low interest loans for, I don't know, smaller vehicles like that.

Yeah.

I think it's definitely worth it to be able to have something that can like stay farm

use and not have to transition every week back and forth to make your personal life possible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, I hope you enjoyed that episode.

Really appreciate your patience on the voice as always.

It is getting better.

It feels great.

It just doesn't sound quite there yet.

Thank you all.

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So stay tuned for that and thank you all so much.

Much love.

See you tomorrow.

Bye.