You pull a dandelion out by hand and it comes away at the crown, leaving the taproot sitting down there ready to send up a new rosette in a fortnight. Bindii does the same, so does thistle, and the ones growing out of the crack between the path and the driveway cannot be gripped at all. Spraying the lawn kills the grass around them and you still have to look at the dead patch. This is the tool for the job: four tines that go in under the root and lever the whole plant out, and a crescent blade on the back for the places your fingers will not reach.

Why It Stands Out

• Two working ends on one head — four tines for lifting rooted weeds out of soil, and a crescent blade behind them for scraping and slicing in cracks. Most weeders do one of those jobs.
• The tines go underneath, not around — they slide in below the crown and lever upward, which is what brings a taproot up whole instead of snapping it off at the surface.
• Manganese steel on an 8 mm bar — a solid shaft rather than a pressed tube, so you can put real weight behind a lever without the neck bending.
• 500 mm of reach — long enough to work a garden bed from the edge without standing in it and compacting your own soil.
• A head only 85 mm across — narrow enough to go in between seedlings in a planted row, where a hand cultivator with a wide spread takes out the crop along with the weed.
• It loosens as well as lifts — run the tines through the top of a bed and you have broken the crust, which is half of what a weeding fork gets used for anyway.
• Nothing to sharpen, charge or replace — one piece of steel with a black finish, hung on a nail in the shed between jobs.

Where to Use It

• Through the lawn in spring — bindii, dandelion and flatweed, the rosettes that sit flush with the grass and come straight back if you only take the top off.
• Along the crack between path and driveway — the crescent edge runs down the join and takes out what is growing in it, which is where a crack weeder earns its place.
• In the vegetable bed between rows — a narrow head goes in beside a seedling without disturbing what you planted.
• Around the base of a tree or a shrub — where you want the weeds out and the mulch left roughly where it was.
• Up against a wall or a fence line — the corner strip that a hoe cannot reach into and a mower never touches.
• In pots and planters — lifting the weed that has blown in and seeded itself alongside something you actually want.
• Across mossy paving and stone steps — scraping out of the joints rather than digging, which is the other half of what the crescent is for.

How It Works

1. The tines go in beside the plant, not at it — pushed into the soil a few centimetres out from the crown, they sit under the root rather than through it.
2. The head becomes a fulcrum — pull the handle back and the bend in the shaft turns the whole thing into a lever, so the soil does the lifting instead of your grip.
3. The root comes up with the soil around it — which is why the plant does not regrow. A weed puller that leaves the taproot behind has simply pruned it.
4. The crescent works the other way — turned over, the curved edge drags and slices along a surface, cutting weeds off below the crown where you cannot get tines in at all.

How to Use It

1. Go after rain or a watering — moist soil releases a root whole. Baked summer clay snaps it, and you will be back at the same weed in three weeks.
2. Set the tines a hand's width out from the crown — close in you cut the root, wide out you miss it. The gap is about the width of your palm on anything dandelion-sized.
3. Push in at an angle, aiming under the plant — not straight down. You want the tines passing beneath the root rather than alongside it.
4. Lever back smoothly rather than yanking — a steady pull brings the whole root up. A jerk breaks it at the thinnest point, which is exactly the point you were trying to reach.
5. Turn it over for the hard surfaces — crescent down, run it along the crack or the paving joint with short pulling strokes.
Tip: do the lawn the morning after you water it, and work backwards so you are not standing on ground you have already lifted. Half an hour on wet soil clears what an hour on dry soil only half finishes, and the weeds you take out properly do not come back this season.

NB: this is a tool that rewards timing more than effort. Soil with moisture in it gives the root up whole; soil that has gone hard through a Sydney or Perth February fights you the entire way and snaps everything at the crown. Through the spring flush from September to November the weeds are growing fast and the ground is still soft, which is the easiest few weeks of the year to get on top of a lawn. Work the same patch twice a fortnight apart and most of it stays clear.

Care and Maintenance

• Knock the soil off before it goes away. Dried clay between the tines sets hard and makes the next job slower.
• Dry it before hanging it up. Put away wet, any coated garden hand tool starts to go at the edges where the finish is thinnest.
• Hang it rather than standing it in a bucket. Tines down in a corner is how points get blunted and bent.
• Straighten a bent tine straight away. One out of line and the head stops going in level.

Specifications

What's Included

• 1 × Hand weed puller