tools

Since I don't till my garden, I have no need of big equipment.  I don't even use a hoe.  (Update:  After three years, I started using a hoe, because weeds became a problem, but only need it a few times early in the spring.) The biggest thing I use is a shovel for digging things out that are too big to pull, for removing sod to enlarge the size of the garden, and for shoveling compost and mulch.    It will never make my list of favorite tools, but it is an absolute necessity to have.

My mainstays, though, are hand tools, and I have some I wouldn't want to do without.

From left to right: 1.) pruners, 2.) tender stem and flower clippers, 3.) yeah, I don't know what that is called, and lastly, 4.) a Japanese style weeder.

The first - those clippers - was one of the best buys I ever made.  They're Fiskars "PowerGear" pruners.  They have a geared mechanism and a swiveling lower handle that makes them easy to use for longer periods - and for just one clip, for that matter - than regular pruners.  These are old - I think I got them down in Galveston when I was living there - and they've been used and abused, never sharpened and still working beautifully.  They're a little more expensive than other pruners, but they are sooooo worth it. There are several models.  Here's the Amazon blurb for  model 7936, which is the one I have:

The PowerGear 7936 large pruner is designed to maximize your cutting power when pruning living plants.  Fiskars larger pruner features patented gearing technology that multiplies force in the middle of the cut where resistance is greatest. This makes every cut three times easier than traditional single-pivot tools. It has helped many of the PowerGear tools earn the Ease-of-Use Commendation from the Arthritis Foundation. Razor-sharp, precision-ground blades cut with less resistance than thicker blades and stay sharp longer, and a rust-resistant, low-friction coating makes every cut even easier.

These are everything they promise.  (Update: the newer ones seem to be of lesser quality.  Such is American commerce.) 

I use the bypass (scissors) type blades for any pruners because they make a clean cut.  The anvil type have only one sharp blade that stops when it hits the other flat sided "blade", squashing the stem instead of actually cutting through it nicely.  Aside from that, this makes them take more squeeze power to cut through anything, and the older I get, the more my hands lose squeeze ability.

Next in line are the small clippers.  I had a pair of Fiskars micro-tip pruners similar to this, but some time recently, I've lost them.*  They may show up when I clear off the garden in the fall, but I use them all the time, so I had to replace them.  These have a curved form that doesn't show in this picture.  The last third of the blades curves gently upward (or downward, depending on your view, I guess), so I thought I'd give that a try to see if it makes any difference, assuming I will eventually locate my others and won't be needing two of the same thing.  I haven't noticed that the curving makes any difference, but maybe after I use them a while, I'll change my mind.  These I use to get into small places, like where the fruit stem (the pedicel) meets the main plant stem, and to clip off things with tender stems that don't require the strength of a pruner.  Very, very, very useful.

*3/19/19: Well, they showed up two years later when I was digging soil from my compost pile.  (I'd finally given up hope of finding them and bought another pair.) They'd been completely buried in soil that was soggy wet and frozen for a couple of months.  The rubberized coating on the handles was stained, but when I got them cleaned up and oiled, the blades looked like new, and they worked fine!

The third tool is an all-purpose thing I found at Walmart and thought I'd give a try.  I think it's also a Fiskars product (that company knows what they're doing).  I don't know what it's called, but when I checked out at a young male's cash register, he said, "This looks like an army tool."   Indeed, it's probably a copy of something an army has.  One side of the blade has teeth and the other side is smooth.  Neither one cuts worth a darn (which I expect is not true of the army's tools).  But the tip of the blade with the notch in it makes it push easily into the ground.  It's good for digging weeds, but I use it even more for creating seed rows (and scraping soil back over top) and digging holes for onion and flower bulbs.  Works, as they say, like a charm for that.  I take it with me every time I go to do any planting.  I love it.  The blade appears to be welded to the hilt, so I wondered if it would be sturdy, but I've used it for three (9 now!) years, putting a lot of pressure on it at every angle, and it has held up just fine.  The handle is large and comfortable in your grip.  Great tool.

Oh, here it is on Amazon:  Fiskars Big Grip Garden Knife.  And it's inexpensive, so big plus.

That last instrument is a Japanese hand sickle, and it's indispensable for weeding small areas.  Or even not so small areas.  If the ground isn't too wet, you can scrape that thing so quickly just under the surface and take out a whole weed patch in a jiffy.  This is, of course, if you get to the weeds before they get too big.  It won't take out a tap root like dandelions have, it will just cut off the top just below the soil surface, but dandelions are a whole other ballgame.  It will, however, take out most garden weeds with such a small amount of effort that it's worth its weight in gold.

I have to state here that I do make it a point to clean all my tools after each time I use them.  I can't afford to replace anything simply because I didn't take good care of it.  From time to time, I oil the pruners, and if I'm working with a plant that's diseased, I clean them with either bleach or rubbing alcohol so as not to spread anything to other plants.

I recently purchased some little snippers that were very inexpensive and looked interesting, but I haven't yet tried them out.*  I think they would probably be most useful in a post-harvest or nursery situation where you have dozens or hundreds of things that have to be snipped off.  They work by squeezing them like tweezers.

*Update:  I've used these now, and they work for only the tenderest of plant material.  They won't cut through anything of any substance without exerting so much pressure that they also hurt your fingers. But I do use them in my cellar seed starting set-up to clip out crowded seedling cells and pinch back when needed.  They work great for that.

As I've said elsewhere, I don't use chemicals on my garden, so I have no use for spray equipment there.  But thanks to the amazing hordes of Japanese beetles that hit this year, I've gone for the big guns (carbaryl) on the ornamentals that they love: roses.  Jeepers!  I read an expert's report on what to do when Japanese beetles attack, and it suggested that if you absolutely must use chemicals, carbaryl will kill them, but suggested that they're only around for about a month, so why not just hand pick them and wait?  That expert has obviously never experienced a heavy infestation of Japanese beetles.  Hand picking is fine if you only have a light infestation and you are absolutely religious about picking them every single morning.  And maybe  every evening, too.

I always pick insects off my plants if they're big enough to pick off, and Japanese beetles are.  They're also lovely to look at - gorgeous insects.  And they're also voracious.  And I do mean voracious.  They will turn your plants into brown lace in a day.  Wait a month?  You'll be extremely sorry.

The previous two years, I've captured thousands of Japanese beetles and tomato hornworms (yuck) in my little home-made kill jar (a plastic lidded cup with a kleenex inside on which I've poured a few drops of fingernail polish remover).

The trick to capturing Japanese beetles is to do it early in the morning.  They're rather lethargic then, although they will pull up their legs rather quickly and roll off the plant, so be aware of that.  After they warm up for a bit in the sun, they'll fly off at just your approach.

But one year, those suckers were in swarms I've never seen the likes of.  They were on the roses and a weedy vine that's in the wildflower garden, and the okra, just like the previous two years, but they were also loaded on the asparagus and other weeds, so I was collecting hundreds and hundreds every day.  And I was not keeping ahead of the damage.  I finally decided this was an invasion, not an infestation, and it called for chemical weapons.  I saw this hand sprayer on Amazon ($16.99) and ordered it.  It's marked in litres, so I made some cup markings since the bottle of carbaryl insecticide had mixing information in American measurements.  It works like a charm.  It's so easy to use, and it has a funnel on the spray tip that swivels so you can point it down or up at whatever angle you need, so you can easily spray the undersides of leaves.  I'm going to order another so if this one ever gives out and they don't offer it any more, I'll have a replacement.

If you have big jobs to do with either herbicides or pesticides, I recommend a backpack sprayer.

Lastly, if you can get your hands on an old microscope, you can use it to properly identify things you're not familiar with, or just have fun.  If you can't get a microscope, get an inexpensive hand lens like jewelers might use.  Here's one on Amazon for only six bucks.  If you do use chemicals in your gardening, you really need to know what it is you're dealing with before you try to manage it.  Really.  Otherwise, you're wasting time and money and putting more poison into the environment for nothing.

An old light microscope has given both me and my grandkids hours of fun.  Wouldn't an electron scope be a gas?

As for planning tools, I use the spreadsheet in Apache Open Office to create my layouts and keep records.  They have a full suite of software that rivals Microsoft Office Suite.  All their programs are compatible with Microsoft Office, and the big plus: Open Office is free.  They've been around for years and have excellent bug-free, malware- and virus-free software.  I've also used them for years, and they've never let me down.  Here's to open source software and all the brilliant and generous people who make it possible!

And here are two snapshots: one of my layouts and a planting record...

Got any favorite tools?  What are they?  How do you use them?

Happy gardening.

Addendum, May 4, 2018:

I found a great hose this year.

It's lightweight and tough, which I need, because I have a long way to drag my hose to reach all my garden.  It also rolls up without any kinking. I like the cloth-covered pocket type hoses, but even the extra tough ones don't last me more than a couple years.  I think this will be a winner.*

*3/19/19: I used this for a whole year and love it.  I'm going to get another one this year.  

*4/08/23:  I now have three, and I've been very happy with them.  I only had one hose that broke at the fitting and had to be replaced.

Addendum, 3/19/19:  Thanks to a Christmas gift from my son, I now have a pair of hedge shears.  What a boon!  I've been cutting back huge ornamental grasses, herbs and chives with either hand scissors or clippers, and there's just no comparison in both time and effort.  These are Tabor Tools  22" manual shears (on Amazon), with aluminum handles.  I've used them just one day to cut back mound fescue, perovskia, and lavender, and they worked beautifully.  I'll know how they work on those large ornamental grasses in a few weeks,  and I'll report on how well they hold up after a year's use.

Update 4/8/23:  I see I didn't report back after a year.  I'm still using them, and they're still great.

A couple of things I should have posted originally and didn't, both of which I could not garden without:  De Walt safety glasses with reading glass bifocal inserts, and Fiskars knee pads.  *See the 4/08/23 addendum below about the knee pads.

Addendum 9/27/19:  This year, because I knew I'd be planting a lot more bulbs creating my tulip garden, I ordered a bulb planter.  My trusty Fiskars Big Grip Garden Knife works very well digging holes, but this is quicker, and the depth of the hole is undoubtedly more accurate.  It holds the precise amount of soil from the hole while you place the bulb, and you then just squeeze the handle to pop that soil out back into the hole.  

Great invention.  This one I got seems sturdy - which you surely will need pushing and twisting it into the soil - and performs very well.  I ordered it from Amazon here: Edward Tools Bulb Planter.  $10.  This one is marked to 4", and a lot of the bulbs I planted called for a 6" depth, so I did have to dig in twice for those.  I thought I might wish I'd checked my options for a 6" planter, but then realized that in most of the places I dug, 4" was about the maximum depth I could comfortably work the tool into anyway, so probably this was the right one after all.

Addendum 4/08/2023: My second son and daughter-in-law gave me this great gift for Christmas, and today was the first day I used it.  I had looked at these before and thought it might be a pain to move them around, so I've always just used knee pads.  This is not at all a pain to move around, and it makes getting up off my knees a snap by offering leverage.  Also, knee pads always slip around and soon start irritating from crunching the straps in the folds of the backs of my knees.  The ends of this gadget fold down to make it easy to store, and it can turn over and be a bench, as well.