My Six Favorite Garden Tools

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My six favorite garden tools make my gardening time easier, more efficient and more pleasant. Some of these reduce trips back and forth to get what I need. Some of them make weeding easier. Some prevent me from having to bend over. All of them have been proven through many hours in the garden.

Triangular hand tool

I found this tool at Walmart years ago.  For some reason, they don’t carry it anymore.  It is the best hand weeder I have hands down and can dig up roots in the ground that are stuck like a baby on a mama.

Maybe this Japanese Weeding Sickle would work well as a substitute.  I’m going to order one and give it a try.

Collinear hoe

This collinear hoe works so well you almost don’t mind weeding (remember I said I liked hyperboles).  To use, you hold it like you are holding a broom. In this position, you stand up straight so that your back doesn’t feel like a freeway loop.  Not weeding at all is my all time favorite described in an earlier blog post but this is a close second. Like any weeding that you do, you want to get those little suckers when they are as small as possible. Do as I say, not as I do.

Utility Knife Box Cutters 

I keep one of these utility cutters in my tool apron at all times.  I use it to cut up cardboard to fit the shape of my garden beds.  I can also use it to cut string, or even a stubborn weed I am trying to eradicate.  I also use it to cut a squash stem and get out the vine borer so that the plant can recover (with a lot of hope). 

I found myself struggling to cut a box today and then I remembered.  After many uses, it gets dull.  Just break off a section of the tip of the blade to get to a new sharper part. It’s like you have a brand-new blade.

Sit upon Bucket

I find so many uses for buckets.  When I go out to work in the garden, I bring one along for trash, one full of weeding and planting tools, and one for the green or brown stuff we’ve pulled up out of the beds that we’re going to dump in the compost pile.  I have a bucket for potting soil and one for compost.  Also, I have a bucket for mulch and one for coir (I use coir to start seeds.)

This bucket lid is an improvement on the bucket idea.  I don’t like bending over.  Just ask my grandsons.  Grammy doesn’t like bending over.  So, any chance I get, I figure out a way to sit down.  These lids, which fit any old five-gallon bucket you can find laying around, is the berries for turning something free (or nearly) into a very convenient sit-upon.  One big advantage for the bucket (as opposed to other sitting devices I have in my garden) is that you can take it into the middle of a big ole bed and not squish any important little plants in the meantime.

Children’s Garden Tools

I discovered how wonderful children’s garden tools are when I co-opted the tools I got for my grandsons’ play.  They soon became some of my favorite garden tools.

A big shovel is fine for the jobs that it is fine for, but this small one is so light that I keep it in my bucket of tools that I drag around the yard to have handy.  I like it for planting out new plants.  It makes a good-sized hole for up to 1-gallon-sized plant containers. 

The rake is great for sorting through all the debris on top the soil and leaving only soil behind.  I used it a lot when we were making new garden beds in a place that had been just Bermuda grass.  After pulling the sod up, this rake could get the little pieces.  It works great from a sitting position on my bucket seat.  And the hoe works well as a grabber of things in addition to weeding.

Garden Apron 

I got this apron a while back (as you can tell from the ground in dirt.)  I modified it a bit on the sewing machine.  I added the pocket up on my shoulder for my cell so it is conveniently out of the way of dirt and water and maybe I’ll be able to hear text dings.  I also added elastic at the waist so I didn’t have to tie the strings. 

Then, I divided one of the pockets into three parts for putting scissors, clippers and my box cutters. Because these divisions are small, the tools stand up making it quick to find them.

In the bigger pocket, I keep clips to tie up tomato or other vines, string, or irrigation repair parts depending on the task for the day.

I also lowered the neckline in the front and the back to allow a little more airflow for those hot days of summer.  Easy to do and then the apron is able to keep all my implements at the ready as I putter through the garden. 

With these six favorite garden tools at the ready, gardening is easier and less stressful.  And we’d like to keep our gardening as stress-free as possible because that’s the whole point, right? I hope some of these tools will make gardening easier and stress-free for you too! Let me know how you use them!