One my most favorite tool is my circle hoe. It makes weeding so much easier. I can get closer to the plant to get the weed out and not harm my plants.But it does bring up a bulb or two.At least so far this year it has.

Paula

Here is a link that might be useful: here it is

My best garden tool is a hand trowel that is stainless steel that I bought at Lowe's a few year's ago. It never rusts, of course, so if I forget it outside in the rain, no matter. I used to replace trowels every two years or so. I am going on season three with this one.

A hand maddox - It's about the size of a large hammer and can be purchased for around 15 bucks at any garden center with a decent tool collection.

You swing it and it's great for ripping up turf, garlic mustard (gets the whole fibrous clump out) and other tough weeds, and can also be called upon to thin out perennials quickly and be used as a dividing tool for others.

This year I started using a small, cheap, PLASTIC hand trowel. It's great because I don't have to worry about damaging tree roots (I'm surrounding by a forest) or accidentally severing an underground electrical cable (I don't have a clue where these are located).

Right up there in importance with my felcos is a stainless Hori Hori knife, about 7" and serrated on one side (and it's sharp!). I use it for weeding, planting or extracting perennial seedlings, dividing, even doing some hand edging in those tight spots that can't be accessed with weedeater or regular edger.

The garden knife was a gift several years ago from my non-gardening brother. Go figure :)

tora doesnt allow emails ... i hope they come back to this post.. and hit the link below ...

i like my dollar store large kitchen knife ... key word.. buck ... and a good knife to practice honing on ....

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link

Ken, I followed your link. Yes, it's a good idea to know where your utilities are. I just never got around to making the call...

My favs are a small shovel with a short handle, about 2/3 the size of the usual shovel. Great for moving or planting small plants. -Keep in mind, I'm a girl -it's probably not a "guy" shovel. #2 fav is a long handled trowel, about 18" that you can put your foot on and use as a tiny shovel -also not a "guy tool", at least in the manner of a shove! #3 is a very pointed triangular hoe (probably not the technical term), that is great for weeding the vegetable garden around plants and removing seedlings by the hundreds! -This could qualify as a "unisex" tool.

I don't like to drag around more than I need and like small/light tools. -Strong handles are a must though.

I love my Mantis LoadDumper wheelbarrow. I often move around large boulders, heavy soil, or transplanted trees. This very heavy duty, 2 wheeled, flat fronted wheelbarrow is perfect. The front edge is flat so you can lower it to the ground and scoop in the boulder or tree without lifting. This has really saved my back.

Here is a link that might be useful: amazon wb for sale

I guess if your fave is the one you use the most, then my Craftsman shovel with a fiberglass handle is my number one. Not only do I use it constantly, but over the past six years of building gardens in this house we built, I have broken the handle four or five times and Sears replaced it FREE. (The guy in the tool department has started giving me dirty looks. Can't say as I blame him.)

Ken, I wish you would explain how to use a short handled fork. I must be missing something. I see it on favorites lists all the time. I paid a good chunk of change for mine, so can't help thinking I don't know how to use it.

fork vs shovel ...

with a shovel .. to be dramatic ... to make a word picture ... you can dig a cauldron and remove a plug of soil with the plant.. slicing off the ends of every root on the plant.. if you get too close ... it is said.. such clean cut hole sides.. can actually inhibit root growth out of the cauldron ... especially as your soil moves towards clay types ...

with a fork ... you will never create such a cauldron ... and you will be able to basically loosen and aerates the soil.. until you can lift the whole plant out.. with nary a broken root end .. if you have the patience to keep forking .. until the plant loosens out ..

with a fork you can also aerate the lawn.. where there is a tire track ...

turn over the compost pile.. fluffing as you go ...

use two forks to break apart plants for division ...

simply work over a bed without removing the plants to loosen the soil ..

and the list could go on forever .....

and its lighter in weight ...

so at moving time.. if you dig with a fork ... not sever every root end.. and do it on a cloudy.. or even better rainy day ... you can basically move a plant.. and it wont even know it ... and will start growing immediately ...

cut off all its root ends.. and it might be months.. before it gets to growing vigorously again ...

or i dreamed the whole thing.. lol

ken

ps: do they use anything else on victory garden .... they have or had nice soil ...

Great Thread--My all time favorite two tools are:
1. A small shovel with a long handle. It is about 1/2 the size of a regular contractors shovel with a sharp edge. So much easier to wield! I use it for everything from digging up plants to divide (yup, I do get a caldron) to putting down mulch. I can't tell you how much it has save my back.
2. A heavy duty stainless steel trowel with an ergonomic handle. Wow, this trowel is sturdy, never rusts, doesn't bend, stays sharp. I just love it.

I will have to explore the possibility of getting a garden fork. We have pitchforks, but the handles are too long, and the tines to thin to really work well.

Kathy

My favorite 'down on the knees' weeding tool is a linoleum knife. Great for weeding in tight spaces close to plants and along stone/brick pathways where it is so difficult to remove weeds. The slender, hook shaped blade slips under weeds for easy removal.

I agree with the gardening fork as a great tool... but it took me many years of continuously building up my soil with the addition of compost and mulch and leaves, not to mention initially double digging the beds with a garden spade, to be able to use the fork effectively. In unamended soils, read 'clay' or soils lacking in sufficient organic matter, a fork simply will not work very well. You can maybe pry the plant out of the ground with the fork, but you won't get it out without a fight, and you will sacrifice quite a few roots in the process.

My favorite tools are an English stainless steel trowel, short handled stainless steel garden transplant spade and garden fork, and a Felco pruner.

Felco pruners, Smith and Hawken hand weeder and short-handled perennial spade.

Thanks for the lesson, Ken. My issue is that short handle. I cannot seem to work with that shorter length without hurting my back. John is right too. I found out long ago that the fork is useless in the initial soil prep on my dreadfully tight clay. I actually bent some tines once. Nevertheless, it had not escaped me that Victory Garden, as well as every English Garden book, magazine, or article always extol this tool. I guess I just need to get it out and give it a new try.

It's very, very hard to find a truly good garden fork. A good one makes very quick work of loosening the tight clay. A not so good one just bends. I lucked into a good one at a garage sale about ten years ago, and have put it through all sorts of abuse. It did lose a tine a couple of years ago, and I've been actively looking for a replacement ever since. It isn't easy. Basically, a reasonably sized woman should not be able to bend tines on a good fork without involving machinery.

I live on limestone and caliche. MY digging tool is a pickaxe. But I have been eying my neighbor's jackhammer lately . I am looking at "BREAKING " ground on a particularly grooling spot, and transforming it into a cactus garden. nothing grows there now. It is a white scar.

Love my short d-handled spade. I call it my right arm!

You tickled my funny bone, Wantonamra. Pickaxe.....Jackhammer?! We feel for you. Breaking ground, indeed.

As for strong spades, I bought a fiberglass-handled contractor's shovel many years ago at now-defunct Hechingers. Despite my habit of trying to pry rocks with it, leaning back on it when it is stuck under a large root I want to break, and other abuse, it still looks like new and the handle has never flinched. Contractors must be pretty hard on their equipment, too.

I am intrigued by the gardening fork debate. Thanks for all the info, ken. Let us know if you find a strong one, gallica. I am ready to try a fork, especially since it's not very efficient ti be turning my compost pile with my one and only spade. Probably why it gets turned only twice a year--and that only in a really good year.

hepatica

One I can't live without is my PINK 5-gallon bucket. It has a million uses, and since it's pink, no one borrows it.
It has one of those sleeves with pockets, and in the pockets I have my Felco pruners--both #2s and #7s, my Hori knife, my ergonomic stainless steel hand trowel, my "scoop" hand shovel, and a dozen other small tools. The pockets help me keep track of items. As far as larger tools, I have a long handled weeder made by a guy in Kansas. It is triangle shaped and razor sharp. You use it like a shuffle hoe. I found it after reading a discussion on the tool forum. I'm on my 3rd craftsman fiberglass handle shovel, and my 2nd long handled trenching spade. I would like to find a really good fork, because I also have bent the spines on mine, and I have good soil. If you want to include power tools, the best ever is my Stihl tiller. It has saved my back. I use it in place of the fork or a large rototiller.
Last thought--I keep a dandelion digger by the door and use it as a walking cane. Yeah, I'm a hardcore perennial grower, I guess.
Cindi

oh my god.. forgot the buckets...

pickle buckets from the deli.. green.. 5 gal...
hermetically sealable to keep stuff like grass seeds dry.. and fertilizer.. for decades ...

white from the bakery.. 5 gals of frosting ....

they used to give them away ... now they have to pay a deposit.. so they charge a few bucks.. but still better than the 5 bucks the bigboxstore wants ..

or if a neighbor has a cat.. litter pails are just as good ...

when your barn is a min of 500 feet from the project.. you tend to gather things up in a bucket.. and put every conceivable tools you could need into it.. so you dont have to keep walking back and forth ...

re forks.. the beauty is the lack of resistance.. in shoving 3 thin tines into the product.. rather than a blade... really makes life better in certain circs .. like the ton of leaves you cant put a shovel thru in the compost pile.. look out neptune.. i can spear them.. lol ...

ken

My shovel that is sized for me not my husband is perfect for me and I find I can work for hours. I also use my kitchen shears with a notch for pruning are used by me much more often than my pruners.

mao

It's definitely worth the extra cost to get GEARED pruners/loppers instead of regular ones. Fiskars makes some. The best ones are their "3X Power Gear". The link below is for pruners. They also make Power Gear Loppers that work great for pruning small tree limbs.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fiskars 3X Power Gear Pruners

I agree on the fork....but I also NEED ny "ladies'" garden shovel....and my Good Will knife ( $.79....got ya beat Ken!) and my tiny little digger, and buckets....I have a neighbor who is a contractor and dry wall compound comes in them.
Getting anxious for this winter to be over....and then I can tuck my leather gloves into my pocket, put my knife and my digger in one bucket, grab another empty bucket, my fork and set out....
Lidna C

Oh yeah, the fork is a can't live without garden tool. It has earned it's hook on the shed wall for all eternity. Then comes my felco pruners, followed closely by my hori-hori knife which I use for weeding, digging etc. It replaced my transplant trowel long ago. Of course I have many other tools but those are the three I would never want to be without.

paulan70, that circle hoe looks intriguing! I keep testing out the scuffle-type hoes in the store and not buying. They look too big for my tightly planted garden. Did you buy it from the place you linked? Short handle or long?

This is an interesting thread, pulled me out from a break at work. I have to say I have been moving plants with a pointed shovel for years and they all seem to do fine. I love the smaller floral shovel I got from Lee Valley quite a number of years ago, the best for digging around smaller plants. I have about 3 or 4 garden forks in the garage and I NEVER use them. Maybe I'll pull them out this spring and retry, but I just tend to carry shovels and spades with me around the garden and they work for everything.

I use a Hori Hori knife for lots of tough weeding (horsetails especially, a real pest in my new garden...), also dividing perennials, bulb planting -- indispensible. Anything you can do with a trowel you can do better and faster with a Hori Hori, and a lot more too. The other weeding tool I have come to love are the various sizes and shapes of the "winged weeders" . Specialized hoes they are but WAY more useful for weeding, you use it like a mop scrubbing the soil surface back and forth and cutting/lifting weeds out below the soil surface. Great tools.

so many long lost friends .... anything worth adding to the list?

ken

The Blist'r one-piece hand trowel from A. M. Leonard. The handle is thick and nicely curved to fit your hand. The handle is red to help you find it (although, after 30 years, mine is pale pink). It cannot be bent or broken.

The things I use the most are a long-handled garden fork and a hand-pick. I have a long-handled spade too, and it's great, but for digging up plants and getting most of the roots, nothing beats that garden fork, and since it's long-handled, I don't have to bend over to use it, so the lifting comes from my shoulders, not my lower back.

My most used tools are my battery powered string weed trimmers that I use to trim the grass and weeds between my plants in my perennial beds. (Trimming is far easier than pulling weeds.)

I seldom move a perennial, only if a plant really needs to be moved because conditions where I initially put it are killing it. I never divide my perennials. However, when I do need to move a perennial, when I am planting a new perennial, turning over the vegie patch in the fall, or planting tree seedlings via the "slit method," a good long handled shovel does the job. I have at least a dozen shovels, long handled to spare my back. My older ones have hardwood handles that are still holding up, and they trace their heritage back to the days when we had horses to care for and clean up after. Wooden handles on newer shovels are purported to break easily. Some newer shovels have fiberglass handles - bad choice of material. Like fiberglass fence posts, these shovel handles seem a great idea in the beginning but age and sunlight deteriorates them and you can experience the pain of a thousand microscopic splinters if you touch a "seasoned" pole of this material. The only way to salvage an aged fiberglass shovel handle is to wrap the length of it in duct tape.

I bought this shovel a few years ago, thinking that it would be the ultimate tool for digging into root and rock infested soil, but it proved entirely useless. The medieval-looking serrated edge tangles in weeds rather than cutting through them. It has been relegated to a museum piece on my barn wall, interesting to look at, but no practical value. I had such high hopes for it, but it is nothing more than a conversation piece now.

As to forks, I prefer my standard pitchfork, also dating back to the days of horses, and moving hay bales. I have a host of short handled gardening tools, but I find that they are only good for planting annuals in pots or containers. My back has seen better days, and long handled tools cause the least damage.

Garden forks all bought at auction sales Garden wagon similar to the ones at the garden centers flat bed with a movable handle a yard sale buy. A large ratcheted branch cutter not exactly mine but Dad hasn't taken it home yet. Cuts roots and branches three inches thick very handy tool. oh last one I call it the baby sledge, or the negotiator, a small sledge hammer about the size of a hammer with a thicker wood handle and a small sledgehammer head. there is also mamma, and pappa sledge, but baby is my fav.