Why & How to Use a Broadfork

A broadfork is a remarkably simple tool that you can use in your garden to gently aerate the soil without digging so deeply that you damage the soil structure. With long handles a sturdy base with strong tines, you can use a broadfork regardless of age or strength. Digging isn’t even the only function a broadfork performs – this is a great tool for the hands-on gardener!
This article has been updated since its first publication in 2013.

Other Useful Soil Articles for Later:

How to Amend Soil with Permaculture

How to Amend Clay Soil

How to Fix Rocky Soil with Permaculture

How to Fix Sandy Soil with Permaculture 

I had never heard of a broadfork until I ready Eliot Coleman’s book, Four Season Harvest on gardening and harvesting year round. Coleman worked with Johnny’s Select Seeds to develop one he likes but you can also find them at many tool stores now.

• The key is to purchase one that is well constructed, since a poorly made broadfork simply won’t work well or last. Like most things, right?!

What is a Broadfork?

A broadfork looks a bit like a pitchfork but about three times the width with shorter tines that are thicker and slightly curved. They are broader than pitchforks, hence the name broadfork.

What is the Purpose of a Broadfork?

Broadforks have several purposes, which include:

1. Provide a way to gently loosen compacted soil without using a rototiller or something equally invasive. 
2. Allow the gardener a way to work in compost and mulch with your soil without bending or shoveling.
3. Gives the homesteader a way to harvest root crops like potatoes, beets, and garlic. 
4. Easily uproot weeds from garden beds to be added to the compost or used as green manure.
5. Pull up cover crops and leave them on the soil surface to decompose and feed the soil.

A broadfork is meant to carefully lift the soil and make it friable by allowing the movement of air, water, and nutrients into the soil structure.

How to Use a Broadfork

Broadforks are a super simple tool to use and a lot less stressful than something like a shovel. 

1. Hold your broadfork upright so that the tines go straight down into the soil.
2. Use the weight of your body to then push the tines into the ground by using one or two feet. If the soil is tough and hard, I’ll need a lot more force to insert the fork and to bring up some soil. If the soil is loose and arable, then its pretty much a piece of cake.
3. Once the tines are underground, rock the broadfork back and forth to loosen the soil and wiggle the broadfork back out of the soil.
4. If you’re using the broadfork to loosen garden bed soil, pick the broadfork up and move it back about six inches to repeat the process.
5. Repeat this all over you garden beds.

Tips for Using a Broadfork

If you’re using the broadfork to mix compost and soil together, simply lay the compost on top of the soil and perform the process above. You can then use a shovel or your hands to simply mix the dirt with the compost and leave it sit on top of the soil. The resulting mix will be perfect for planting your veggies into.

When I use my broadfork to uproot weeds, I make sure their root structure has been broken and then I just leave them on the surface of the soil to decompose and feed the soil. You can also harvest them into a wheelbarrow and serve them up as forage for your livestock (as long as you’re sure they’re not toxic). Free livestock food!

Soil isn’t the only thing the broadfork will bring to the surface; if you’ve got root crops, it will dig them for you, too. The big bonus with this tool over a shovel is you’re less likely to skewer your garlic or potatoes. It happens, but not nearly as often for me as with a shovel.

• The principle is the same – place your fork in your grow bed a few inches in front of your garlic, insert into the soil by pushing the broadfork down with your foot, pull back to bring up soil and garlic bulbs (or potatoes or turnips or beets).
• If you have a weed barrier at the bottom of your growing area, just be careful not to go so deep that you pull it up with your dirt and veggies. 

What is the Difference Between a Tiller and a Broadfork?

A rototiller is a machine designed to deeply break up the surface of the soil to decompact it, bring rocks to the surface, and ostensibly prepare the dirt for planting. You can set the tines of a rototiller to change the depth of penetration into the soil.

• Some tillers will go as deep as 24 inches and can be pulled up as high as to only till 4 inches into the soil. 
• These adjustments are great, but the machine itself is heavy and can compact the dirt previously tilled as it goes on to till more soil.
• It aslo uses fuel, which is expensive and can pollute.
• Tillers can also be expensive to rent repeatedly, or to purchase.

A tiller can pulverize soil structure and create a compact hardpan (a compacted soil layer), especially in soils with clay. The fork will penetrate the depth of the tines but it won’t rip apart your soil’s ecosystem like a rototiller.

• One of the best things about a broadfork is that it wont turn up weed seeds to the surface of your soil in droves, thereby assuring you have a major weed problem like tillers do. (Yeah, learned that lesson the hard way.)  

Because a broadfork is more gentle, it can actually improve soil structure over time by keeping all the components of quality soil intact and in place. Some of these components include:

• Water – because broadfork don’t broadcast the soil they move, it dries out slower. Dry soil = dead soil in man ways, so preserving moisture in garden soil is desirable.
• Microorganisms – these little critters live around soil roots, organic matter in the soil, and additives like biochar. Their presence provides food for plants and other soil organisms.
• Mycellim networks – mushroom roots spread far and wide in healthy soil and play a vital role in soil nutrition and life.
• Root systems – roots from surrounding perennial plants and temporary annual plants provide sugars for the soil that feed other plants and microorganisms.

Breaking up soil compaction in the first 4″- 6″ of topsoil is great and can help you integrate compost, natural fertilizers like compost tea, and plant more water into the soil. However, anything deeper than 6″ starts to do more harm than good because in these deeper areas, you have all the components listed above.

These should not be disturbed unless you absolutely must!

When You Might Use a Tiller

If I can smother the weeds or sod with cardboard or another material covered by a bunch of organic matter, I’ll do that way before I try to till or remove sod but there are times I’ve found I need to move faster or cut harder.

For example, in my very large front yard, we opted to use a sod cutter and then a rototiller to remove the grass and turn over the dirt that would eventually become our medicinal/edible garden. I needed it done quickly and the thought of using a broadfork on that large area full of compacted clay made me laugh. Yeah, not in this lifetime!

I’m not completely anti-tiller if I have hard, compacted, deal soil to loosen.

If I’d had time and resources for the new herb garden project, I would have just built up layers of organic material on top of the grass, instead of yanking it out – methods like lasagna gardening and Hugulkultur come to mind. Alas, I was in a hurry and live in a highland desert where wood/leaf material can be hard to come by in large quantities. 

There are times when it might be appropriate to use tilling equipment even in a no-till garden area, especially if you’re preparing a brand, new garden on virgin soil. Especially if that soil is depleated and dry.

–>>Think more about this topic with our article No-Till Gardening with Power Equipment?

What about you – ever used a broadfork? What’s your favorite application? What other garden tool can you just not live without? I need ideas for my Christmas list…

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