A garden fork, spading fork, digging fork or graip is a gardening implement, with a handle and several (usually four) short, sturdy tines. It is used for loosening, lifting and turning over soil

Soil

Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...

 in gardening and farming. It is used similarly to a spade

Spade

A spade is a tool designed primarily for the purpose of digging or removing earth. Early spades were made of riven wood. After the art of metalworking was discovered, spades were made with sharper tips of metal. Before the advent of metal spades manual labor was less efficient at moving earth,...

, but in many circumstances it is more appropriate than a spade: the tines allow the implement to be pushed more easily into the ground, it can rake out stones and weeds and break up clods, it is not so easily stopped by stones, and it does not cut through weed root

Root

In vascular plants, the root is the organ of a plant that typically lies below the surface of the soil. This is not always the case, however, since a root can also be aerial or aerating . Furthermore, a stem normally occurring below ground is not exceptional either...

s or root-crops. Garden forks were originally made of wood, but the majority are now made of carbon steel

Plain-carbon steel

Carbon steel, also called plain-carbon steel, is steel where the main interstitial alloying constituent is carbon. The American Iron and Steel Institute defines carbon steel as: "Steel is considered to be carbon steel when no minimum content is specified or required for chromium, cobalt,...

 or stainless steel

Stainless steel

In metallurgy, stainless steel, also known as inox steel or inox from French "inoxydable", is defined as a steel alloy with a minimum of 10.5 or 11% chromium content by mass....

.

Garden forks are slightly different from pitchfork

Pitchfork

A pitchfork is an agricultural tool with a long handle and long, thin, widely separated pointed tines used to lift and pitch loose material, such as hay, leaves, grapes, dung or other agricultural materials. Pitchforks typically have two or three tines...

s, which are used for moving loose materials such as piled hay, compost, or manure. Garden forks have comparatively a fairly short, usually wooden handle, with a "D" or "T" end. Their tines are usually shorter, flatter, thicker, and more closely spaced.

A smaller version of such forks with shorter, closer-spaced, thinner tines (but a full-sized handle) is known as a border fork or ladies' fork, and is used for lighter work such as weeding amongst other plants. Forks with broader, flatter tines are made for lifting potato

Potato

The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...

es and other root crops from the ground. A pair of forks back-to-back is often used to lever apart dense clumps of roots.

See also

• Garden tool
  Garden tool
  A garden tool is any one of many tools made for gardens and gardening and overlaps with the range of tools made for agriculture and horticulture...
  
  
• Spade
  Spade
  A spade is a tool designed primarily for the purpose of digging or removing earth. Early spades were made of riven wood. After the art of metalworking was discovered, spades were made with sharper tips of metal. Before the advent of metal spades manual labor was less efficient at moving earth,...
  
  
• Pitchfork
  Pitchfork
  A pitchfork is an agricultural tool with a long handle and long, thin, widely separated pointed tines used to lift and pitch loose material, such as hay, leaves, grapes, dung or other agricultural materials. Pitchforks typically have two or three tines...
  
   (for lifting loose material such as hay
  Hay
  Hay is grass, legumes or other herbaceous plants that have been cut, dried, and stored for use as animal fodder, particularly for grazing livestock such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep. Hay is also fed to pets such as rabbits and guinea pigs...
  
  )
• Broadfork
  Broadfork
  In farming and gardening, the broadfork, or U-fork is a tool used to manually break up densely packed soil, like hardpan, to improve aeration and drainage....
  
   (for breaking up Hardpan
  Hardpan
  In soil science, agriculture and gardening, hardpan or ouklip is a general term for a dense layer of soil, usually found below the uppermost topsoil layer. There are different types of hardpan, all sharing the general characteristic of being a distinct soil layer that is largely impervious to water...
  
  )
• Fork (disambiguation)
  Fork (disambiguation)
  A fork is a utensil for eating and cooking.Fork may also refer to:-Implements:* Broadfork, for breaking up the soil* Garden fork, a pronged tool designed for digging* Heretic's fork, a historical torture device...