Years ago my father-in-law gave me an old hoe he found when he was cleaning out his garage; I thanked him politely, took it home, and never used it. I thought the hoe was a quaint artifact of a bygone era when people planted victory gardens. Just this summer I figured out that it’s remarkably good at pulling up shallow-rooted weeds.

Of course, there’s always room for improvement. The dual blade hoe promises to cut your weeding time in half. On its website (dualbladehoe.com), the inventor doesn’t give his name, only his email address (webmaster [at] dualblade.com)–but he does display a self-portrait alongside a short history of the tool’s birth. He’s grinning ear to ear, holding the dual blade at shoulder level.

I’m not sure if it’s the slightly menacing pose or the crooked smile, high forehead, and beady eyes that give him the look of a serial killer. But he sounds like a nice guy and is pretty excited about his tool’s twin, angled blades, which not only double your hoeing speed by uprooting weeds when you push and pull but also protect any vines that might be snapped off by conventional hoes.

He discovered an “additional benefit” while hoeing watermelons:

“I noticed weeds growing among the vines and attempted to remove them. I discovered that the watermelon vines moved right up the hoe handle, allowing the weeds to be removed and the watermelon vines to return to the ground unharmed when the hoe was pulled out. I no longer had to weed by hand or risk cutting the watermelon vines using a traditional hoe. The same great results were achieved around my tomato plants.”

Yet another benefit was discovered in the rows of onions. “A slight thrust of the handle” is all it took to pop out a weed that had strayed too close. This was accomplished “by inverting the hoe” and placing the front blade between the row and the weed.

“At this time I realized the hoe was unique.”