Anyone watch BBC Gardeners World tonight?

[triplets]

Monty Don was earthing up potatoes with a shovel type tool, my dh said it was a mattock. He said he would like one so I thought I`d get him one for Fathers Day. Looked on Amazon but a mattock looks totally diff! Any ideas as to what Monty was using?

If you are on Twitter you could ask him.

Isn't a mattock a long bladed choppy type thing?
I saw it last night and wondered what it was too. Looked like an extra wide hoe type thingy (technical term)

This?

These I think ? I have something similar that came from Amazon for a tenner or thereabouts but can't remember what it was called.

Here you go, this does the job nicely, very useful.

Yes all very similar, great links thank you. Dh going through a very tough time atm with his health so really want to get him some nice things for Fathers Day. Thank you :)

Didn't see GW, but I suspect what he was using was technically a digging hoe, a mattock is strictly speaking a heavier narrower tool.

They're incredibly common in most of the world - if you can only afford one tool, a digging hoe is what you will have - lots of spanish ones here.

In fact where I used to live in southern spain, one of our neighbours (elderly chap) came up & peered at me when I was digging up potatoes with a bog standard fork, looked at it closely, and said 'hmm, I've seen one of those things before when I worked in Barcelona for a while, any good, are they?'

One point to note, they tend to get sold with very long handles in the UK, if he finds it hard to get to grips with, consider chopping it down a bit, you really want it quite a bit shorter than you would think (and strangely it is still much better for the back than using a spade)