Having just bought a house, my daughter Heather asked me what tools she would need for her garden. Here is my answer, with the tools categorized by significance. From the most significant to the least, the categories are: Essential, Important, Handy, and Useful. The order within each category is irrelevant.
Note: This page is still being developed as I think of more tools that might interest my daughter.
I generally use the first three of these every time I work in the garden.
- hose
- A garden hose should be long enough to reach from the hose bib (faucet) to the farthest corner of the garden, in case you want to soak a plant at that corner slowly. My hoses are ribbed inside, which prevents kinking.
I have two hoses always connected, one in front and one in back. But then I live in a climate where I do not have to worry about the hoses freezing. In colder climates, hoses should be disconnected, drained, and stored before the first freeze.
- trowel
- I do much more digging of small holes with a trowel than I do large holes with a spading fork or balling spade. Often, I use a trowel to dig fertilizer around the base of a rose bush or into the top inches of potting mix around one of my dwarf citrus. They are great for planting a few small bulbs or young bedding plants.
Get a real strong trowel. Make sure the shank between the blade and handle is equally strong. The blade and shank should be one continuous piece. You don't want either the blade or shank to bend while digging. The handle should be comfortable. I prefer a heavy plastic, one-piece handle that is a round cylinder with little grooves to enhance my grip and a rounded end so that I can push on it to force the blade into the soil. However, I have seen some very nice trowels that are all one piece, with the handle merely an extension of the shank, still a cylinder with a rounded end. I avoid wood handles, which may start to form splinters too quickly; unlike many other garden tools, a trowel is gripped very tight when in use, tight enough to force a splinter deep into your hand.
It might be handy to have both a standard (wide-blade) trowel and a narrow-blade trowel, the latter being useful when digging in confined areas such as flower pots and planters.
lopping shears
- These are long-handled pruning shears, used on branches too thick to cut with the smaller hand shears. Too thick is really a term indicating how hard the branch is, not its physical size. Lopping shears also come as either blade-and-hook or blade-and-anvil, just as hand shears. Do not bother with lopping shears with fancy lever action, which is intended to yield greater force on the blades. Any branch that requires such force should instead be cut with a pruning saw.
pruning saw
- A pruning saw is designed to cut wet wood. The teeth angle back towards the handle; and the saw cuts on the pull, not the push. The blade tapers towards the end. I prefer a very significant taper on a relatively narrow blade that curves concave towards the teeth; this allows the blade to work in confined areas, near branches I do not want to cut.
Folding saws are nice, but be sure you get one in which the blade can lock open. Don't bother with a folding saw that uses a wing nut to hold the blade open; if the saw binds in a cut, the wing nut might not hold. I have two pruning saws. The folding saw has relatively fine teeth for smaller branches. The other saw does not fold and has larger teeth. Both have pistol-grip handles as seen in the adjacent illustration of the folding saw. This allows my hand into confined areas better than the looped handle seen below the folding saw. Avoid plastic handles, which break easily; only buy saws with wood handles.
- white glue
- As I mention on my rose pruning page, I use this to seal pruning cuts, not only on roses but other woody plants (especially my peach tree). Conventional pruning paint often causes die-back. I buy whatever brand I can find: Elmer's, Willhold, Gluebird, or a store's house brand.
spading fork
- I think this is better than a spade for digging, whether merely to turn the soil, for a planting hole, or to move a plant. I also use my spading fork to stir my compost pile. Get a fork with four tines, not three. The tines should be quite sturdy; you do not want them to bend. The fork should have a D handle (as shown). Do not confuse a spading fork with a manure fork or pitch fork, both of which are too light to withstand the stress of digging.
grass shears
- Besides trimming grass close to other plants, along an irregular walkway, or around a sprinkler head (where a power trimmer is not suitable), grass shears may be used to trim dead flowers from small, clumping plants and to keep ivy in bounds. I like the kind where the handles are vertical (upper drawing) rather than horizontal (lower drawing); my knuckles do not scrape the ground.
- potato hook
- Once you have turned the soil with a spading fork, a long-handled potato hook is the best tool for breaking up clods and generally preparing a seed or planting bed. Get one with four tines in a straight line instead of three (which often comes with the center tine advanced before the two side tines). I think a potato hook is much more effective than a hoe.
lawn rake
- This is a rake with long, flexible teeth. Mine has metal teeth spread in a fan. When I finally replaced my old rake — the teeth had worn down until they no longer hooked — the wooden handle of the new rake broke less than a year later. Unlike good garden tools, the handle was made without any regard for the direction of the wood grain. My current rake has an aluminum handle coated with vinyl.
- balling spade
- This is a narrow-bladed spade, very good when digging in confined areas (e.g., when digging up a plant). I prefer one with a blade that is straight at the end instead of pointed; this is handy when digging a narrow trench. This, too, should have a D handle.
Note: Be sure you learn the difference between a shovel and a spade.
- A shovel is for scooping and moving. The blade is at an angle to the handle so that you can scoop with the blade nearly horizontal without stooping.
- A spade is for digging. The blade (or tines on a spading fork) are nearly parallel to the handle. If you stand on the top of the blade (or shoulder of the tines) while holding the handle vertically, the blade (or tines) will go straight down into the soil.
-
step
- Usually, I hate receiving gifts of gardening tools. I always want to choose them myself, after examining them (thus no mail-ordering). However, my wife gave me this excellent step, which is also a seat and — turned upside down — a "kneeler". I use it frequently.
- When pruning my peach tree, I set my tools on the step so that I don't have to squat down to pick them off the ground.
- When pruning low-growing shrubs, I sit on it.
- When weeding or digging fertilizer around my roses, I kneel on it. The underside of the seat has a thick foam pad for my knees.
- I can even stand on it to reach something not high enough to require a ladder.
I was going to classify my seat as merely Handy, but I use it so often that it is really Important (but not as important as my wife).
- large empty coffee cans
- I use about six empty coffee cans. I still call them "3 pound" cans (about 1.1 kg), but it has been many years since the roasters packed even 2.5 pounds of coffee in them.
- One can holds shards of broken clay flower pots. As I repot plants, I always seem to need a new piece of broken pot to cover a drain hole in a new pot, especially if the new pot is larger than the old one.
- I put small bags (3-5 pounds each) of plant food into cans. These are fertilizers that I use sparingly; the contents seem to last longer than the bags. (I leave the torn bags in the cans to identify the contents.)
- I use one can as a scoop for the sand from which I make my potting mix. I use another can — one with evenly spaced ridges on its sides — as a measure so that I get the right proportions of sand and peat moss. And these cans are excellent for storing small amounts of left-over mix.
- I use a lot of twine, primarily to train my grape vines and climbing roses. I buy a large cylinder of hemp twine about once every two to three years, far too much to carry around the garden. From the cylinder, I wind a ball of twine slightly smaller than the diameter of a coffee can. With my garden paring knife, I cut a small X in the plastic lid of the can. I put the ball of twine in the can and thread the free end through the X. When I need twine, I just pull enough through the X and cut it off, leaving about an inch still sticking out of the X. In the can, the ball never rolls away while I am pulling off a length of twine.
By the way, the plastic lids from coffee cans make excellent coasters under the saucers in which I place my flower pots.
- sprayer
- Even if you garden strictly according to organic principles, you still sometimes find a need to spray. After all, there are such things as insecticidal soaps, BT, and other natural products to protect your landscape.
I recommend a pump-up sprayer with 2-3 gallons capacity. I prefer high-impact plastic over metal for two reasons. First of all, plastic will be at least partially translucent. You can see how much spray mixture is in the sprayer; some plastic sprayers even have easily read marks at half-gallon and one-liter increments. Second, some of the materials I spray will eventually corrode even the best metal sprayer.
If you use a sprayer, you also need a bottle of liquid soap. It's as good as (if not better than) any commercial wetting agent. Fuzzy or waxy plant leaves as well as some insects readily shed liquids. A good squirt of soap into the sprayer — after the mix is added so that excess foam doesn't hide the measurements — will ensure that the spray does indeed wet its target. I buy the cheapest liquid dish detergent I can find, avoiding detergents with lotion, lemon, or excessive perfumes.
pruning shears
