(Photo:  a recycled BBQ as a mobile potting table)

Garden Tools

Having the right tools for the task as well as for the gardener helps make gardening enjoyable. With a little care in choosing and in maintaining, tools will serve you well and last for years – some of mine are over 30 years old.

Garden tools are a personal choice. What works well for one may not suit another gardener. The length, grip, weight, shape, construction, durability, and cost all have to be taken into consideration. Over the past 45 years I have owned or tried a large number of garden tools for all types of gardens: plots, pots, box beds, raised beds, elevated beds, and cold frames. I donated those that did not suit me to various organizations – such as the Ottawa Tool Library, Senior Organic Gardeners, and Just Food for others to try.

(Photos:  containers, plot, and box bed, each needing tools of different sizes)

There are a great many to choose from in a variety of materials: plastic, resin, aluminum, chrome molybdenum, iron, high carbon steel, stainless steel, and other unspecified metal alloys. Wood handles (ash is popular) are durable but over time they do sliver, especially if they get wet often – the wood swells and then shrinks as it dries. Some tools are “ergonomic” in design and the grip and shape will suit gardeners with particular needs. Also, although most tools can be used easily in either hand, some garden tools favour a right-handed gardener. The Yankee weed hoe is one example.

Tip: Garden gloves protect hands against slivers, blisters, stinging weeds, prickly plants, insects, and soil.

Throughout the season, an urban gardener will use tools for scooping soil and compost (shovel); carrying soil, fertilizer, chopped weeds, or mulch (trug); aerating soil (fork or claw cultivator); shaping soil (soil hoe); planting seeds, bulbs, or seedlings (narrow blade transplant trowel); weeding (weed trowel, weed hoe, or soil hoe); cutting produce and chopping up material for the compost (harvest knife); trimming plants and disease surgery (pruners); levelling soil, gathering weed cuttings, and debris (soil rake); mixing compost (compost aerator); and end of season cutting out plants and thick roots (serrated trowel).

(Photos:  Left: Metal Alloy; Right: Yankee weed hoe)

A basic starter tool set of a size to suit your garden and your gardening practices might be shovel, fork, soil hoe, soil rake, serrated trowel, harvest knife (I use a retired bread knife with excellent results), pruner, and trug/carry all bin.

Tip: you can purchase sets of tools (often at a savings), but some gardeners might benefit more from building a collection of tools from many different manufacturers based on needs and designs. Buying a tool set can be a cost saving, but the tools in the set may not suit your gardening methods and you may find yourself discarding some and purchasing others to meet a specific need or way in which you work.

(Photos: Left: Shovel, spring rake, and hoe/claw; Centre: Trugs; Right: Serrated trowels — Standard, transplant, and multipurpose)

Choose a size suited to both your garden and your gardening methods (measurements are approximate):

  • Indoor tools (6ʺ/15 cm): small trowel, mini trowel (e.g., coffee spoon), aerator (e.g., chop stick), and scissors.
  • Hand tools (14ʺ/36 cm): trowel or serrated trowel, claw cultivator, soil hoe, pruners, soil rake. There are also combination tools available (e.g., soil hoe/claw, weed hoe/rake).
  • Extended-length hand tools (18ʺ/46 cm fixed handles or extendable/telescoping tools of 36ʺ/1 m): shovel, hoe, claw cultivator, rake, compost aerator. Combination tools such as shovel/pick and soil hoe/claw are available.
  • Long-handled field tools for use standing (48-60ʺ/1-1.5 m or more): round point shovel or square-end spade, 3-tine cultivator, 4-tine fork, soil hoe, weed hoe, leaf rake (with springy tines), soil rake (firm steel tines). A combination weed hoe/soil rake is available.

Most gardeners will have a selection of tools from 2 or 3 or the above groups.

(Photos: Left: Indoor tools — small trowel, chop sticks, scissors, and mini trowel; Centre: Soil hoe/claw cultivator; Right: Extended tools — fork, rake, claw, and hoe)

Working in soil will cause all tools to wear down. These tools should be sharpened for best results. A metal file or a whet stone works very well, or you can be more aggressive with an electric drill and a grind stone, or even a hand-held carbide cutter which actually shaves the metal thinner. Some of the softer alloys wear down faster while iron and steel wear down much more slowly. Tip: Stainless steel is very durable, doesn’t rust if forgotten in the rain, is slow to wear, and easy to clean.

Tool Maintenance

A good practice is to clean and dry all tools after use and sharpen them at the end of every season. Soil-encrusted tools could transfer bacteria, fungus spores, viruses, or weed seeds to other parts of the garden and wet soil can cause staining or rusting on some tools. I clean soil from tools with a metal scraper (for large clumps of soil) and I dry brush them with a stiff brush to remove the powdery material. Wet tools can be dried with a rag.

Rusted tools can be cleaned with sand paper then lightly oiled. Heavily rusted tools may need an electric drill and a wire brush before sanding.

(Photos: Left: Hoes — stirrup, stirrup/rake, and soil hoe; Centre: Rusted & stainless standard trowels; Right: Pruners)

Sharpening shovels, claw cultivators, pruners, and hoes at the end of season gets them ready for the next season and a light oiling helps prevent rusting or staining if you are storing the tools in an outdoor box or shed. Some people prepare a lightly oiled bucket of sand and plunge the working end of the tool into the sand after cleaning and sharpening. However, it means you now have a bucket of sand and oil to store all year round, and then you have to dispose of it somewhere when you no longer need it. Of course, if your tools have had especially heavy use in tough soil, you may wish to sharpen them whenever they are not performing as well as they might. Caution: “sharp” does not mean tools have to be sharp enough to cut skin!  The exceptions are pruners, knives, and one very sharp stainless-steel serrated trowel (“hori hori knife”), which I highly recommend.

Wet tools can transfer disease from plant to plant or plant to composter, so it’s best not to prune after a rain or when dew is heavy. If disease (including tomato or potato blight) is present, it’s good practice to disinfect the tool with rubbing alcohol, bleach, hand sanitizer, or hot soapy water before using it on disease-free plants or before putting it away.

Wood-handled tools may need some sand paper treatment after a few years, and some softer metal alloys will need straightening (e.g., that claw that got stepped on or the telescoping rake that was used a bit too vigorously and the handle bent). Tip: Always plunge sharp tools into the soil rather than lay them on the ground where an unsuspecting foot might find them and cause unwanted pain and suffering.

A few terms for the new gardener

Aerator — used to loosen soil or stir compost and allow air to penetrate. Plant roots and compost both need air to develop. In pots, top watering causes the soil to condense so a round tool, not a blade (I use a Jekyll weed fork or a chop stick) can be inserted and wiggled about without cutting roots. In larger areas a claw cultivator or round tine fork works well. Tip: Deep aeration of the soil is necessary only if the soil has been walked on and compacted and the air squeezed out or if the soil has been left to the ravages of winter and has condensed. Since no-tilling of in-ground soil is best, the soil should be aerated with the least aggressive method possible: claw (surface, and least aggressive), fork (6-12ʺ/15-30.5 cm deep disturbance of soil and soil inhabitants), rototiller (most aggressive for severely compacted soil – works like a blender).

Dibber — for poking holes in soil so seeds or seedlings can be planted. I use a chop stick or my finger or a hoe if I am making a shallow trench. Tip: The only real “dibber” I use is for onion sets, garlic, and leeks: a shovel handle minus the shovel end and marked in inches from 1 to 6. The end of the wood handle is about the diameter of a loonie, and I mark the length with a sharpie pen to show 6ʺ/15 cm:  2 inch for onion sets, 3 inch for garlic, and 6 inch for leeks.  I push this into friable soil to the inch mark needed, twist to withdraw, drop in the seed or seedling, and water — backfill and firm soil for onions and garlic, but do not backfill the leek hole with soil!  Let nature fill it in its own time — saves trenching and hilling of leeks.

Shovel (round point, sharpened) — great for digging large holes, digging out compost, cutting through roots, and lifting plants for transplanting.

Spade (square end, sharpened) — used for edging in-ground gardens and dividing/reducing perennials (such as oregano). It doubles as a “dust pan” to pick up debris.

Soil rake vs. leaf rake (hand and field tools)— A soil rake has firm tines and is used for smoothing and levelling soil; a leaf rake has flexible tines and is primarily used for collecting leaves and garden debris.

Soil hoe (hand and field tools) — primarily for moving soil about, hilling, trenching, and removing soil at harvest to get at root vegetables. Soil hoes can also be used for weeding.

Weed hoe (hand and field tools) — used for uprooting or cutting weeds just under the soil surface. Some hoes are small for pinpoint accuracy between plants (e.g., single-prong weed hoe), and others are larger for quick work in large areas (e.g., stirrup hoe). Two community gardeners once watched me using a stirrup hoe (which cuts on both the push and pull strokes) for large areas, and turning it on its edge for pinpoint work – they both raced off to purchase stirrup hoes. However, there are a great many different shapes, sizes, and compositions of weed hoes — more than any other garden tool. In tight areas, where there is a possibility of pulling vegetables with the weeds, I have found that pulling by hand works better than any tool. If the roots have tangled, cut off the weed tops with scissors and leave the roots.

Show your tools some TLC and they will serve you well for many years!

Happy Gardening.