"VivienB" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 10 May 2004 20:36:19 +0100, "tuin man"
wrote:

mushroom fork (excellent for empting out
compost heaps)

Is there an illustration of one of these somewhere, or can you explain
what it looks like? I am going to ireland in a couple of weeks' time,
this sounds like it might be useful to me.

Regards, VivienB

I do not know if there is any such site. I just looked up the true temper
tools site, but it's not there. Apart from that, I just happened to be in a
general hardware store in Dublin , way back around 1989 and that were I
found the mushroom and potato forks and also the dung fork (which I
mis-named as pitch fork)
Both the potato fork and the mushroom fork are very similar.
Firstly, if you're accustomed to seeing long handled tools, neither are
quite that long. I can go to the lock-up over the next few days and get
actual measurements for you if you wish.
I can understand why the potato fork is so names. Its tines are round and
blunted at the ends. They are situated quite close. More or less enough,
just right that when scooping out of the soil, the soil will fall away and
the potatoes and stones remain. It is considerably heavier than the other
fork.
Like the potato fork, the mushroom fork has cupped tines also blunted at the
ends, but far fewer. And an fairly similar volume capacity. Quite a large
bite actually, which is why it's good for compost heaps. Imagine you want to
hold some water in your hands. Your thumbs will lie above the finger level.
However, why it's called a mushroom fork and not say... a beet fork....
which I could easily see it been used as... I don't know. That's what it was
called on the receipt.

Thought the mush/beet fork is lighter than the potato fork, it in turn is
quite a hefty tool compared with the dung fork. (4 prongs)
Like I said, I can check them out more carefully later. I doubt that there's
any label information left as I used them commercially.

Patrick