On Thu, 03 Jun 2004 00:39:57 -0500, Dan Hartung
wrote:

Gwen Morse wrote:
I bought something called the "Hula-ho" at my local hardware
store/garden center. The garden center guy told me it was also called
a "skimmer".

This is mostly called an "action hoe". So-called because it cuts on both
the front and back stroke. You can use it to cultivate, weed, or edge.
Basically you put it in front of you with the blade down and pull until
it's a couple of inches in, then pull level to rip up whatever's on top.
You then can remove it or break it up.

I went back to my garden center and they took back the hula-ho and
sold me a basic spade, instead (which I expect that I would find more
generally useful even if I'm having trouble using it with this grass).

The guy at the garden center told me that my soil needed to be softer
to use the hula-ho.

I said I wanted something to remove strips of sod (grass
w/roots, not commercially-bought "sod").

Do you want to *keep* the strips, or just make a neat edge for the
planting bed? For the latter it should work fine, for the former you may
want a real sod cutter (you step on it and cut straight down, then go
under the sod as with a piece of cake).

I don't want to keep the sod, I just want to remove it.

Gwen