I have never seen the farm crew so excited about a piece of machinery than the Finger weeder. It vastly reduces the time we have to spend hoeing between the plants in the rows. It arrived here from Switzerland last August and went to work immediately on the fall planted winter vegetables.
It only works on small seedling weeds so timing is critical. We make the first pass about one week to ten days after we transplant a crop. The crop has by then put out enough roots not to be uprooted by the fingers. The fingers are driven by spikes in contact with the soil. The fingers bend and disturb the soil between the plants uprooting the seedling weeds. As the plants grow the machine can pass faster through the field.
We then make passes every week until the plants are too big for the machine to pass between the rows.