7 Essential Tools Every Gardener Needs
Discovering your green thumb can be a monumental occasion. With a newfound passion for gardening, you can get to work creating a beautiful flower garden or vegetable patch to admire and reap the rewards from for years to come.
However, wanting to create your very first garden doesn’t mean you’re ready to get started just yet. It can be worth adding the following essential gardening tools to your shopping list:
1. Gloves
A pair of gloves can make gardening a far more pleasant experience. While you might like feeling the earth between your fingers, thoroughly cleaning your hands can be time-consuming. Gloves can function as a comfortable barrier between dirt and your skin, protecting it and keeping it clean.
Gloves are also vital for protecting your hands from pesticides, herbicides, and fungal infections from gardening materials and plants. You can also rely on them to avoid cuts, scrapes, calluses, and blisters. When the time comes to go glove shopping, you may see the value in these gardening glove options:
Cloth
Cloth gloves are cool, breathable, and ideal for keeping your hands clean. However, they don’t protect your hands from sharp objects like prickles and rose thorns!
Rubber-Coated
Rubber-coated gloves can be the answer if you’re looking for gloves to protect you from chemicals. While they offer excellent protection, your hands can get hot and sweaty.
Nitrile/Neoprene
Nitrile or neoprene gloves feature synthetic rubber for optimal protection from cuts, scrapes, and chemicals. They’re flexible and breathable. However, rose thorns can still find a way through!
Leather
While expensive, leather gloves can be ideal for gardening. They prevent moisture from accessing your hands and can protect against sharp prickles and thorns.
2. A Wheelbarrow
A wheelbarrow will be one of the most valuable pieces of gardening equipment to tuck away in your garden shed. You can use them to dispose of garden debris, mix fertiliser, and transport gardening materials like compost, rock, shrubs, and new plants.
Just don’t forget to stay on top of wheelbarrow maintenance to keep it in good condition, such as:
Use a grease gun to lubricate axle bearings
Clean it regularly to prevent moisture
Apply anti-rust agents to moving parts
Pump up the wheels for stability
Check nuts and bolts to ensure they remain tight
3. A Weeding Fork
Where there’s soil, there’s weeds. You can easily spend as much time weeding your garden as you can tending to your prized plants. As a result, you shouldn’t underestimate the value of a high-quality weeding fork.
Weeding forks, also known as hand forks, make digging up weeds much easier. You can also use them to prepare planting holes, mix additives into your soil, and aerate the earth. Purchase one with a comfortable handle and high-quality steel for comfort and longevity.
4. A Spade
A gardening spade is a long-handled gardening tool that every beginner and experienced gardener needs. You can use a gardening spade to break up ground, cut through tree roots, remove grass, plant trees, and create edges.
Gardening spades come in all different shapes and sizes. Some have rounded leading edges, while others have pointed edges to penetrate soil quickly and easily. Spades with narrow and slotted blades are also standard for ditch-digging and clay soil.
The handle is of equal importance. Fibreglass handles are quite popular for their strength and light weight but don’t absorb much shock. Hardwood handles are preferred because they can absorb shock and vibration while being strong enough to last. Many garden spades also come with metal handles. While strong, they can be heavy to use.
5. Secateurs
Shrubs, bushes, trees, and plants don’t stay in perfect condition forever. They can require trimming and pruning from time to time. You may even want to take cuttings to grow more plants elsewhere. In these situations, you’ll need a pair of secateurs.
Secateurs are shears with sharp blades that can easily slice through stems and twigs. There are many options on the market to suit different tasks.
You might buy bypass secateurs with curved bottom blades to cut branches off at the stem. If you have thick, woody stems to contend with, anvil secateurs with flat bottom blades may be more to your liking. If you want pruning to be effortless, consider buying powered cordless secateurs. While heavy to hold, you don’t have to apply any pressure to enjoy clean cuts.
6. A Watering Can
A garden hose will, of course, be a helpful addition to any garden. However, not everyone’s garden is within convenient reach of an outdoor tap or rainwater harvesting system. In that case, you’ll need a watering can.
Choose a watering can with a decent capacity, a comfortable handle, and weather-resistant materials like UV-resistant plastic or rust-resistant metal. You can also choose one with a rainmaker sprout to mimic rain over a large area or a straight spout for targeted watering around plant bases.
7. A Garden Rake
Gardening is an enjoyable activity, but it can also be time-consuming. Having a rake in your garden shed may make some tasks far quicker to undertake. You can use a garden rake to rake up fallen leaves and quickly remove debris and old plant materials from your garden beds.
There are many options to choose from, like shrub rakes with aluminium handles, thatch rakes to remove thatch from your lawn, and lightweight plastic leaf rakes for quick and easy leaf and debris removal.
Start Shopping for Gardening Tools
These are just a few of the many gardening tools you’ll need for enjoyable and productive gardening. If you need a helping hand with gardening, don’t forget to contact the team at Crewcut. Professional lawn care service providers can assist with a range of lawn care tasks, like garden tidyups, lawn mowing, tree trimming, and more.