RAKES and RAKING – The rake is primarily a tillage tool, which, in its simplest form, consists of short metal or wooden teeth, or tines, attached to a bar set at right angles to a long handle. Its principal uses are (1) to draw loose materials (as leaves, grass-clippings, etc.) together; (2) to break tip soil clods, and (3) to level and make soil surfaces fine. The simple form is varied in many ways to adapt the tool to special purposes. the variations involving differences in size, number, shape, length, closeness and arrangement of the teeth and the material of which the tool is made.
TYPES – Some styles are strongly built for heavy duty, such as raking gravel, breaking clay clods and removing stones from garden beds; others are made for light work, such as gathering grass clippings on lawns: still others are especially adapted for gathering leaves, some of these including various kinds of self-cleaning devices. Although the teeth are usually of rigid steel or in the form of wooden pegs, some are of flexible metal, split bamboo, or rubber-covered flexible wire. No one style is adapted to all duties, so every gardener should have an assortment of styles, each adapted to a specific kind of work and the physique of the worker.
For the average garden, this assortment should include a wide and a narrow “ordinary” steel garden rake with a 5- or 6-ft. handle, preferably of “clear” white ash; a wooden “lawn rake,” with either wood or metal bows, for clearing up twigs, litter, etc., and “dressing” drives and paths; several light bamboo or “lawn-broom” type rakes whose long, flexible tines literally sweep up grass clippings and leaves, without injuring the grass; and, possibly, one with flexible rubber tines.
How To RAKE – The correct and efficient use of the rake so as to conserve effort while doing good work is a real art. In gathering leaves and twigs, the large wooden rake should be used with long sliding strokes, the tines being lifted only enough to clear the debris; the light bamboo or steel spring kind is better used like a broom to “brush” the litter along. The steel rake is used differently, whether smoothing newly dug soil, breaking a surface crust or destroying young weeds.
In fitting soil and preparing a seed bed use alternating push and pull strokes, letting the teeth touch only the top of the clods at first, then sinking them gradually until finally they work freely in the pulverized soil. Sometimes it helps to turn the rake over and use the flat top to break large clods and fill hollows and uneven spots. To break up a crust and create a dust mulch rake only 1 in. or less deep, letting part of the weight of the tool come on the hand nearest the head and propelling it with the other. This same delicate action is most effective in destroying a new crop of weeds, especially if the rake is moved backward and forward with a slight sidewise movement so as to cover every inch of surface. Where seeds are planted a full inch or more deep, this raking can be done in two directions, at right angles, over the whole planted area, thereby getting rid of a host of weeds that would otherwise call for much close, or perhaps hand, work later.
Even the raking of gravel or ashes, as in making a path or drive, has a technique which, if followed, means a better job. The trick consists of constantly pulling forward from the back and top of the pile the larger stones and clinkers so that they form a layer in front and at the bottom. Then as the process is continued, the finest material is left on the top where it can be smoothly leveled or crowned and then rolled to a firm, even surface.
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