There are a lot of different ways to sow seeds directly into a garden bed.
Sometimes I use a hoe to form a shallow trench, then drop the seeds in. Other times I use my finger to poke a hole into the soil before dropping in the seed. I find as I get older, my finger has a tendency to get pretty tired if there are a lot of seeds to sow.
This week I decided to do something about it. I went into my woodworking shop a made a couple of traditional tools called dibblers, sometimes also known as dibbles or dibbers. These tools are used to make holes for planting seeds.
It took just a few minuets on the lathe to turn a couple of different sized dibbers from a piece of scrap cherry wood.
- The dibble on the left has markings every half inch. The one on the right has markings in one inch increments
Most of the dibbers you see for sale on line and in the gardening catalogs have very sharp points. The description usually says something about how easy it is to penetrate hard soil with a metal-clad point. It occurs to me that if you prepared your planting bed properly, you wouldn’t need a sharp point.
I left the business end of my dibblers somewhat blunt. My garden soil is friable so it doesn’t take much effort to poke a hole. The blunt end also leaves extra space at the bottom of the hole for the seed to rest at the proper depth. It does make it more difficult to kill vampires, however.
If you need more space for a seedling transplant or plug, the tapered shape allows a hole to be widened by rotating the dibber in a circular motion.
I suppose I could have just whittled a piece of broom stick with my pocket knife but this is a much more elegant and versatile tool.