On 01/09/2015 13:43, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Tue, 1 Sep 2015 11:45:39 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:

And I'd recommend using a hollow tined fork if the lawn is
horribly compacted and not free draining - bigger holes and slightly
less effort than using an ordinary fork and wiggling it around.


Have you ever used one? On hard compacted soil?

I bought one a while ago, thinking it was just the thing for a mossy
compacted grass path. The hollow tines were tapered, wider at the top
than at the bottom, ostensibly to allow the plugs of compacted
grass/soil to discharge freely. They did no such thing! After two or
three insertions into the soil, they blocked, and I had to spend ten
minutes or so clearing them out, only for the same thing to happen
again. It actually worked very well on grass where the soil wasn't
compacted, which drained well and which wasn't mossy, but it was
absolutely hopeless on compacted soil where it was needed and intended
to be used.

Mine was OK on damp heavy clay apart from when it hit stones. I suspect
it would be a nightmare if there were many small stones or rubble in the
ground. As ever YMMV.

I threw it away, and reverted to using a fork, which worked very well!

I suspect something along the lines of a pair of sharpened stainless
steel pipe inserts welded to a significantly wider long mild steel pipe
with a pogo stick style foot rest on it would work even better.

I agree that most of the hollow tined forks you see are a bit weedy.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown