>> a mattock is an awesome tool... pick at one end, hoe on the other,
I love 'em! Being so narrow, they're much better for digging narrow trenches than shovels or hoes.
A pick mattock does have a pick facing one way and a very heavy, thick, narrow hoe blade facing the other way. Calling that an "adze" is a little more accurate than "hoe". It chops much better than it hoes. And mattocks and adzes go back to the Bronze Age, which feels cool.
For cutting weeds off right at the surface of very hard clay a heavy adze is better than a lightweight hoe, since the weight of the mattock head does all the work. All you have to do is drag the adze blade behind you and it cuts weeds right at the surface of the soil. (It is too heavy for the rapid lift-and-chop motion that classic hoeing uses.)
I have a great, heavy pick that I prefer even over my mattock for breaking up soil and levering out rocks ... UNTIL I encounter ROOTS. Then my "cutter mattock" really shines
A cutter mattock combines a stumpy, short, blunt axe blade with a sharper wider adze: they're at right angles to each other so you can cut roots running any which way. The adze cuts a 2-3" wide swath through small roots (until you hit big rocks).
Also, since the "axe" blade is very narrow, like 1 - 1 ½ inches, it is better for chopping big tree roots since its force is concentrated.
The toughest thing is chopping into heavy clay with roots AND lots of big rocks. I had to loosen it up and pick out the biggest rocks with the pick (which gets stuck in the roots). Then I could chop roots with the mattock (using both blades).
Doing this, it almost doesn’t matter if you forgot to soften the clay by wetting it down ahead of time. All the sweat that drips off takes care of that for you!
