Hi folks, this is a beautiful rainy day in California and I'm really excited to be able to share with you
some really neat things that we're doing here. And in the process of that I'm going to explain to
you how to make a recycle hoe. This is a special type of hoe which I recently
developed and which allows us to control weeds in a situation like this in the background,
without damaging the plastic. You've probably heard of the phrase "Necessity is a mother of invention", right? Okay, so that phrase is a real important one. And
what I want to do is I want to explain to you what the necessity was in our situation here. So down in the furrows of these strawberry
beds there's a cover crop growing. Those are not weeds. But those are cover crop
plants growing there. The reason we grow this cover crop is that it
really helps water to infiltrate into the soil and not run off.
And that's really really important in our system because we need that water to infiltrate down
back into the soil and into our aquifer to recharge
it. We needed a way that we could control the
weeds from the plastic edge over to where the cover crop was growing. We'd tried lots of different types of tools. We'd tried hoes like this, which were pretty
useless. We'd also tried of stirrup hoes or hula hoes. And these weren't very good. They were very challenging to use and we often
would cut the plastic even with this. Now the only hoe that kind of worked was this
one. This is called a wire weeder or a wire hoe. But it wasn't great. And the reason it wasn't great was there's two
things. It's got a point on one end. And that point is very easy to poke into the plastic
and then cause damage the plastic. And then also, it's asymmetrical. Because it's asymmetrical it works very well on
one side of the furrow but not the other side of
the furrow. I developed this new hoe design which I call the
Recycle Hoe. And let me explain to you the three parts of it that
are critical. So the first thing you're going to need is a large
piece of grass. Okay, so this is a piece of grass. The grass is called Arundo. And it's a very common and invasive weed here
in California in certain areas. And you're going to use this as our handle. These make great handles. For our blade what we're going to use is a piece of this steel
strapping. So this is steel strapping that comes from
hardware stores. You don't have to buy it. It's very springy. This is what they throw away. And I'm always looking in dumpsters for all kinds
of goodies and I've noticed this stuff for many years. And after noticing it for many years I finally
figured out a way to use it in our research
program. So this comes in different sizes. This size is half inch. This size is three quarters inch. So we're going to use to make our blade. It's a very, very sharp surface for cutting weeds. Okay, so that's our blade. And then to attach all this together we're going to use a bicycle inner tube. And this is one that means a lot to me because I
ride a bike to work everyday pretty much. And I go through a lot of tubes. And in the process of all those tubes... I have a
real hard time throwing tubes away because tubes like this can be used for all different kinds
of things. And so I'd hung on to these tubes for years and
years and I've got a big bag of them in my garage. And I knew eventually I would probably come up
with some way to use these that would be... real
useful. Now to save time I took the handle the way it comes off the plant and I already removed all this outside wrapping. So here's one that's already ready to go. This handle is about 8 feet tall. I like a nice, long, tall handle like this because it
allows me to reach way out and control weeds without having a stoop over
so much. So it's egonomically really good. I also prepared for us two blades. Let's start with this first blade. So here's the blade and this is a two foot long
section of that metal strapping. And we're going to attach it with these two pieces of rubber. So this piece of rubber here, this is about a 6 inch
long piece of rubber To do this what you're going to a need to do is
take your piece of strapping, bend it in half like this. Keep the tension in it like that. Make sure it doesn't slap you in the face. Slide it through the tube, like this. So that both
ends come through the end of the tube Okay, like that. And then we're going to grab on to those two
ends and pull it over the end of our handle. Move it down about like that. Now one thing that's kind of important is you don't
want to have this sticking out so we will then pull that back a little bit. Pull this side back a little bit. and then I like to get the... I don't want the end... this part of the handle
sticking out so I move it just like that. Okay. Real simple so far right? Now you take your two foot long section of tubing that you cut from the same inner tube and you start wrapping it. Now I like to keep this wrap really, really tight because I want to be able to go around it many
many times. Okay, so I'm wraping that all the way down to the end here overlapping just
slightly. When I was a kid in Papua New Guinea we used
a lot of rubber tubing for making all kinds of things like
slingshots and spear guns and so I've always enjoyed working with rubber tubing like this. So now you get near the end. Well how you
going to attach it? Well, what I do is I just bring it around like this. I hold my thumb
underneath there and then I slip that part over the top of the previous wrap. And there you've got it, alright? Now to make the hoe blade the right shape just push it slightly. And look at that. Isn't that beautiful? You've got a sharp hoe right here folks. This thing can slice through soil like a butter knife
slices through butter. And it's really, really effective. Now, we're not just going to put one blade on our
hoe. We're going to put two blades on there. And were going to use the other size. We're going to redo this again. Okay so we've got our 6 inch piece of tube right
here. We're going to bend that in half. Slide that right through the center of our piece of tubing. Boy is it windy out here. We've gotten some nice
rain today. Pull it over the end like this. Okay? Now remember I'm going to pull this little bit here
back so it's in line with...or a little bit inside of the
tubing. Because I don't want to cut myself. Okay, now get it just in line... the rubber tubing
and the end of the shaft are in line on this side. And then I take my rubber strapping and start wrapping. [HIP HOP RAP MUSIC] And when we don't
recycle it starts a downward spiral. [MUSIC] It's about time that this goes viral... [MUSIC] Recycling is turning old things to new
things [MUSIC] Saving energy while reducing pollution [MUSIC] So when you get the chance go and
break out the dance. [MUSIC] Recycle Robot with all of your friends [MUSIC] My Eco heros say it in sync [MUSIC] Recycle, Reduce, Reuse, and Rethink ! [MUSIC] Recycling is turning old things. Keeping it really tight as I go. Now we're going to tie this one off. Remember, put your thumb there, bring it around get it underneath your thumb and pull it out, and
there you go. You've got your second side of the
hoe. Now were going to push this down a little bit. And there you go folks. You've got a beautiful hoe right here with a three
quarter inch blade on one side a half inch blade on the other side. and this can be very effective at controlling small
weeds right down in these areas right near the
plastic. [MUSIC] This handle here remember is made out of
Arundo... that grass, which is widely available. This stuff is lightweight right now, but as it dries
it'll even get lighter. It's not quite as strong as bamboo. This is a Phylostachys nigra or black bamboo which I grew at my house. This is a really nice
type of bamboo because it's extremely straight. It's much tougher than Arundo. So I kind of think
of these as two different models. This is the one that has the lifetime warranty. This is the one that's got probably a several year
warranty. But eventually this one's going to
crack. It'll crack much more easily than than this bamboo
would. The bamboo is just rock solid. Now if you don't have access to either Arundo or
any type of bamboo, you could also use a dowel
like this. This is some type of a hardwood dowel. The challenge with dowels is it's very hard to find
a dowel that's longer than about 6 feet, that's not
a real big thick one. And I like to have some flexibility in that handle because from what I've seen that makes the hoe actually
work better. It kind of keeps the tension on it as you're
working it. And that helps to cut the weeds better. So this
can work. What you may notice on this one is I actually
attached this with some ring clamps. And that was one of the initial designs I came up
with. And it worked fine. This is what we actually
used for hand weeding all of the furrows in the area
behind me here. I also made a few smaller versions This is one that I can use in my home garden. I've got some raised beds and I can just clean up
the weeds there. The metal strapping that I've found in the store....
this type.... the steel strapping.. this really is kind of a unique product. Because what this is.. is it's extremely springing. You know you bend it and it just bends back the
way it was. Now that's not quite the same with something like
this. This is some galvanized, or actually
stainless steel sheet metal. When you bend this it doesn't bounce right back. And that's a bit of problem. So I would not
recommend using this type of material ,either stainless steel or
galvanized. I don't think it's quite as good. The other material that I've tried a little bit is this
plastic strapping. This does work on very small weeds but it's not as good as steel strapping. So this is what you find quite often in the
hardware stores as well. They use this for bringing in large loads of timber. But what you really want is the steel strapping. So one of the benefits obviously is that it's
extremely inexpensive. You could make one for
free basically. It takes your time but it's fun to make. It's very lightweight. So because it's so lightweight it's going to make it
easier to weed for a longer period. You're not
going to feel as fatigued. The flexibility.... I think I mentioned that. It helps to
keep the pressure on the soil and helps the hoe to kind of travel across the soil
in a very aggressive way and really take out
those weeds. I really like that it's got two different size blades. So one for smaller weeds maybe, and then for a
little larger weeds here. The flexible end, the blade part, what's really nice is you can adjust this down to
something like that and then adjust it back. And you know what? If it breaks, it's easy to
replace, right? It's not very hard to replace
these. So you can come up with all different types of
shapes on the end. Whatever suits you best. Now I have tried different designs for the blade
like this one's kind of a neat one. This is a serrated blade. This could work for, maybe a little bit better for
larger weeds. Although to be honest I don't really want the weeds to get that large that
they need something like this. And this would really do damage the plastic. Sometimes when I'm out here working somebody
will call me on my cell phone. And I could actually continue weeding with one hand because it's so lightweight and be talking away and still be getting some
work done. It always stays sharp. So that's a very important
thing. This hoe, the blade is so sharp that it just
continually slices through the soil effectively because there's very little resistance as that
blade moves through the soil. A lot of other hoes, the blade is quite a bit thicker
than this. This in my opinion is the best hand weeding tool that we can use in our
strawberry operation and it will also work very nicely in our vegetable
operation where we need to get real tight weed control right next to our lettuce or broccoli
or whatever vegetables we're growing. The only disadvantage I know of is...it's not great
on really big weeds, but for the most part we don't let weeds get big on our farm in our
vegetable and strawberry systems. Once they get big....than they're settings seeds.
And we don't want that. So quite honestly, we don't need a hoe that will
handle large weeds. We really just need one like this that can handle small weeds, when they're really
vulnerable, and easy to take out with the hoe. There are some characteristics of this hoe which
I think can help us remember a few things about
our systems. I like to take a long-term approach to our weed
management, and the long handle helps me remember that. I like to be flexible in my a weed management
system. You always got to be flexible so that you can
stay a little bit ahead of the weeds. Kind of change what you doing if you need to. And this flexible handle helps me to remember
that. I also like that this hoe is made of all recycled
materials. Because for me that really helps me to remember
that we need to recycle a lot more in society as general but also on our farms. And making your own hoe which you can use to control your weeds, and making it out of all
recycled materials I think is a are really neat thing. Anyway, I hope this has helped you to figure out how you can make your own recycle hoe. I hope you enjoy making it. You might even make some for people and give
them to them as a present. You might share this design with another farmer
or another gardener so that they can also use it. And I really hope that this can be used by people
in many different areas regardless of their
resources. And I hope that it can help them with their weed
control and their weed management. Take care !
