Gardening tools are an essential part of any gardener’s life. Gardening is a hobby enjoyed by millions of people world wide, and it requires specific tools to make the job easier.
A garden tool is any one of several tools designed specifically for gardening and overlaps considerably with the broader range of gardening tools made specifically for horticulture and agriculture.
Gardening tools can be grouped into hand tools, powered tools, and hydraulic tools. The difference lies primarily in the tool’s ability to manipulate soil, plants, and other elements of a garden.
Hand Tools
The hand trowel, the most common gardening tool, is essentially a handheld shovel with a flat surface on top and handle.
Gardening hand trowels can be used for almost any type of gardening. This versatile tool allows gardeners to remove soil or other parts of a flower that they might otherwise disturb if they used a regular shovel.
Gardening hand trowels also come in different sizes depending upon how much work the user wishes to do. For example, some gardeners prefer to use smaller garden tools such as those with only four prongs while others enjoy the larger size of a full-sized trowel.
Powered Tools
Some gardening tools require the use of an electric cord, while others can work on their own power.
Power tools include power saws, cultivators, and weed whackers. Power tools require the use of an extension cord that plugs into a wall socket, but these tools tend to have longer cords than other cutting tools. Most gardeners decide between power tools and hand trowels based solely on cost.
Essential Gardening Tools
While most gardeners spend a lot of time working with the dirt, there are tools that allow the gardener to segregate and work with the compost.
A compost pile, like a trash compactor, is simply a bin where garden compost is put. It is very easy to start a compost pile since the material will break down into a powder.
The gardener simply needs to add the material and turn it around every few weeks, which speeds up the composting process. A hand tool made specifically for separating and working with compost is a good choice for this task.
Other tools include a wheelbarrow and spade.
A wheelbarrow is a two-wheeled tool that is similar to a fork and is often used to turn small gardens or potted plants around. It has a handle on one end that allows it to be pulled across bare fields or through tight spaces.
A spade is similar in design to a wheelbarrow, but it has a digging fork at the end that allows the gardener to dig up gardens and put the soil directly in the wheelbarrow.
Gardeners also commonly use planting tools such as a knife and spreader.
A planting shovel is like a spade with a flat base and a pointed tip. This is used to dig up and mix soil, lay down rows of plants, and plant seeds.
A knife is often used when a knife will get stuck in the soil or dirt. However, there are many other tools that can be used by the gardener, but these are the most common ones.
Gardening tools are not only used for tilling the earth and planting seeds, but for digging up weeds and plants that have been damaged or killed by insects.
Weed wrenches are very helpful for this task. They are circular, but have a wide base that grips the ground tightly so the gardener can pull them out with ease. Insect killers such as citrus-based insecticides are used when a certain level of infestation has taken place. Most herbicides are liquids, while others are powders.
Plants that are not affected by an insecticide may need to be removed and disposed of properly, so it is important to know what type of gardening tools to have on hand.
One of the most versatile gardening tools is the weeder. A weeder is simply a long metal pole with a hole in the center that has several sharp points on the end of it.
The gardener can use a pair of weeds as a spade. The weeder is helpful in digging up all kinds of weeds and plants and even small tree limbs that have been uprooted. It can also be used to pull up clumps of soil where a lawnmower cannot get at it.