What is an asparagus gouge used for?

What is an asparagus gouge?

An asparagus gouge is a garden tool, originally designed for cultivating asparagus. An asparagus gouge has a short handle (often in wood) and a long narrow sharp blade at the tip. The head must be sturdy and forged in steel, often boron-treated. The short-handled tool will require gardener to work crouched at ground level or standing when tending to raised plantings such as raised vegetable beds or flower boxes.

Two main advantages of asparagus gouges are: tool can be used in heavy or stony soil, and it is ideal in very narrow spaces, all thanks to a narrow, very sharp head. Asparagus gouge is sometimes called a “root-puller”.

An asparagus gouge is used for:

• Harvesting asparagus (and other vegetables): its long blade is ideal for pulling asparagus out of soil, but also carrots or parsnips, for example;
• Weeding: asparagus gouge is ideal for extracting long taproots of certain weeds such as dandelion, plantain, thistle, sow-thistles or dock;
• Loosening and breaking up compacted soil: as with a weeding knife, asparagus gouge allows to

Two main types of asparagus gouges are found: asparagus gouge with rounded head and asparagus gouge or root-puller with rectangular head.

Did you know? : the Term “gouge” is also used for carpentry tools (wood chisels with a rounded cutting edge), a blade used in podiatry and is even… a geological term denoting a granular rock formed along movement of a fault.

The gouge is used to harvest asparagus… and very often for manual weeding

How to use an asparagus gouge?

An asparagus gouge is used in ornamental and vegetable gardens as a weeding knife with an especially narrow blade.

1. Simply drive the blade into the soil by pushing on the handle. The tool’s entry into the soil is eased by its sharp edge and narrowness. Indeed, asparagus gouges are especially suited to clayey, heavy, compact soil and to stony soils;
2. Once in the soil, you can give the tool a levering motion by pressing the handle towards the ground. This operation helps to loosen the soil;
3. To best extract roots of adventive plants or vegetables: the asparagus gouge or root puller must be driven into the soil at the collar of the plant (at the base of leaves, at soil level), while turning and simultaneously pressing the handle. The blade descends all around the root and severs the rootlets. Then simply pull to extract it from the soil.