I bent the prongs on my garden fork the other day. Not just a little bit, so the prong line was a little wobbly, but really quite substantially – one prong was about 60° back, the next one about 30°. Oh the fun of having a stone-filled garden.

We tried to realign it with an artful combination of banging it against a rock and jumping on it, and that straightened it up quite a bit – until I started using it again and the super bent prong instantly bent again — not quite as bad as the first time but still difficult to use as anything other than a pseudo-rotivator. I clearly don’t know my own strength, have a lousy forking technique – or just a lousy fork. I suspect the latter is a big part of the problem – someone bought it for me and while it’s not from Poundland, I doubt it’s the best quality fork available.

Is there any way to fix it so it won’t keep bending? Or now it’s been bent once, has it been weakened so it’ll keep doing it again?

If I have to buy a replacement, I want one that will last – any brand recommendations or things to look for? Or am I to blame – should forks only be used for light work and not digging up giant-squid-esque roots (as I was doing when the prongs went bendy)?

(Photo by MarkusHagenlocher c/o or Wikipedia)