Not sure. But I can tell you what my least favorite is: The hose I bought at Home Depot a few years ago. It was advertized as a "no-kink" hose. But it should had been advertized as "the hose that kinks". It drives me crazy. And the plastic sprayer I bought with it is even worse. The plastic threads are junk and normal water pressure pushes it right off the end of the hose (after I get all the kinks out of course). So, please let me know if anybody knows of a great brand of hose and where to buy it!

Terryboc, I'm with you on the hand cultivator - mine is the sole tool that goes with me everywhere in my yard. I return to the tool bucket to get my pruners & shears when I need them, but the cultivator is always with me. I use it for planting as well as cultivating - I can't remember the last time I used a trowel.

Least favorite? Rake - just because I hate raking.

My favorite are my two Structron shovels as nothing stays in one place for very long in my yard.
Rockman I am with you there is nothing worse than a difficult hose. I don't remember the brand name of mine but it's the classic one with the white stripe. I bought it at a Plumbing Supply Shop you might also try a Marine Supply Store for a good quality hose. Good Luck kt

We do have a huge marine supply store in my town--I will check it out!

I agree with the hose issue. I bought 2 of the flat hoses that come with a sprayer end. Both of them went in the trash as they tend to split, and if they are cold, they won't reel back up on the reel holder that comes with them. Plus, the sprayers tended to leak. I do have a great hose reeler that I love-I think it's called the ready reel. It is one that uses water pressure to roll up the hose. I've had it 2 seasons and it works wonderfully. Well worth the price.

Oh, I've got several of those water wheel type hose things & I absolutely LOVE them! We even put one on our dock for the boat. They work perfectly and being disabled allow me to do some watering chores independently that I would not be able to without them & for that reason alone I love them. We have two that hold 50-75' of hose and two that hold 35'. I just love pushing that lever & watching the hose wind itself back up all by itself!

The one thing that goes with me everywhere is my hand trowel. Second is an old pair of poultry shears that work better than any pruners to deadhead.

This is the first year I've used a dibble, and it's uses continue to amaze me, including making quick work of a mole tunnel.

I've given up on finding a great hose that doesn't cost as much as a large tree. Fortunately, this year I haven't had to do much watering...

Martie

Oh, rockman, I'm with you on the stupid hose thing!! I bought one at the beginning of this season, not cheap, BTW, called "Neva-kink." I have re-named it "Always kink." Makes me insane. The el-cheapo hose I bought at a Christmas Tree Shop works better...You're right, Martie, at least we haven't had to do much watering this year...!

Now that I've complained, my most used tools are my little snips and my trowel. They certai-ly aren't new, but they do what they are supposed to!

Emily

I love my spading fork, its great for turning newly ammended soil, lifting out large perenials for division,& moving plants, i'm sure I use it for other things as well because it seems like its always out in the yard with me, I also love my very sharp flower scizzor for deadheading, taking cut flower and collecting seeds.

I keep a small tool kit with me when ever I'm outside and it so nice to have everything you need right on hand :-)
Wendey

Asking for my favorite tool is sort of like asking for a favorite pet or kid - almost impossible to pick! Right now I'm using my stirrup hoe a lot in the veggie garden and in unplanted new garden spaces. It's the only hoe I've ever found comfortable to use since it gets pushed back and forth through the soil. I'm using a pair of Fedco pruners (comfy handle and sharp) and a set of long handled pruners that adjust depending on how much leverage is wanted. My last much loved and used tool is my straight bladed spade used for edging & digging plant holes in areas where there aren't any rocks.

My most often used large tool is my long handle spade. I paid 50 bucks for it 25 years ago. I never use a fork any more. I use it in the vegetable garden for every thing. Its fine for edging, or cutting a weed off below grade, cutting a 11/2" diameter tree root. Some days its best leaned on. Some days its a coat rack. Its gives me a third hand when potting up large, tall plants or trees. I drive the shovel into the ground and place the pot at its base and velcro around both handle and tree. Then I can place and tie off one or more bamboo supports. Its especially helpful on a windy day. Its also a magnet, when working with small hand tools I just toss every thing at its base. I use it to divide large clumps and transplant. I use it in the fall to root prune any tree or shrub because of its longer blade....I never realized how much I depended on spade until now. Thanks for asking.

Being hand forged its a bit on the heavy side for many but its fine for me. I think a 5' 120 lbs. person may encounter some difficulties with it.

Ron

my favorite new gardening tool is -- get this -- a digital voice recorder!!!

I keep it in my pocket while gardening and tell myself stuff to remember to do (lilacs need fungicide; petunias need fertilizer, delph need staking...); stuff to buy (get some sulfur to make hydrangeas blue, white impatiens for shade garden); future design ideas (move maroon daylilies next to black eyed susans).

Then later I transcribe it to my "lists" (shopping, todo now, todo later...)

Sometimes I just refer back to it when I get back to the garage (supply area) to remind myself what I came there to get!!!

I also sometimes take it with me on my morning "coffee-walk" to capture more to-do things for next time out.

I am a list person so this works well for me. Once something is on a list, there seems to be less pressure for me. I can review the list and proactively decide on priorities to focus on, instead of reacting to every chore that I walk past that is calling me and then wonder why I didn't get anything done that I wanted to at the end of the day.

I also used it to record an online seminar (on gardening, of course!)

Last year it would have been great to have it when I was doing a season long chart of bloom times of *everything* in my garden. That was super tedious and the recorder would have been perfect then.

My least favorite tool this year is also the rotating handle Felco pruner. Not only does the handle cover come off too frequently, I don't like that it takes 2 hands to close it. I like the thumb switch of the Wolfgarten pruners better. And the small size fits my hand better. If only it came with replaceable blades...

My possible favorite tool of next year might be the Felco 610 pruning saw. I went to a pruning demonstration recently and that was the saw of choice there. It looked great. Its on my shopping list.

This year it's my neighbor's wheelbarrow, unfortunately. All of the hardscaping I've been doing and moving stone/dirt from back yard to front and vice versa would have been awful without it. Next it's the shovel, for the same reason.

My least favorite tool is anything I have to use on my hands and knees. I have wimpy knees. I think I am in desperate need of a garden bench on wheels.

Wendy, good info on the pruning saw. I'm in need of one and will put that on my list.

My favorite gardening tool is the hand held hose attachment I got for 2.99 at Ocean State Job Lots. Bought one to replace something else and loved it so much I bought one for each of my three hoses and a spare! Instead of being shaped like a gun, or like a long wand, it's almost like a flashlight, but it is very ergonomically designed, comfortable to hold. It has great settings, (Soaker, Shower, Mist, Jet, Cone, Flat) and I've used each setting for different things. It has an on and off switch that HOLDS TIGHT which means I can leave the water tap on but there is no leakage. I love it.

Patty

My favorites are my big two-wheeled garden cart and pitchfork. My large perennial borders create a lot of trimmings when I weed, edit, and deadhead. I can easily fill a big two wheeled cart more than once even on a "quick" garden touch up, and especially when I'm shearing back things like catmint. I throw my trimmings in piles on the lawn as I go, and then come back with the cart and fork, and just pick up the whole pile at once and tip it into the cart. I also use the tips of the tines as a rake to pull the pile together or round up stragglers. The fork is great for picking up piles of brushy prunings, too, especially the thorny rose canes.

I can empty the cart with three forkfuls if the material is lightweight.

On weeding days, the emptied cart is filled with mulch and spread in the shrub borders to cover the disturbed soil, again using the fork (the ONLY tool to use for moving shredded bark mulch).

The tool du jour for me is my trusty pair of loppers (I call it "Cindy"... as in singer Cindy Lauper (just can't help it... sounds like "lopper"). I'm cutting down the top half of a privet hedge that has grown scraggly and 18' tall, and the loppers are my main way of doing it, though a Japanese hand saw and pruners are doing some of the work as well.

I should add that I'm using an orchard (tripod) ladder to get up into the hedge. Tripod ladders are fantastic for pruning shrub borders and hedges because you put the third leg into the middle of the clump, and it lets you get right up into the hedge. Two-legged and 4-legged ladders can't do that. If you have dense shrub borders or ornamental specimen trees that need pruning, a tripod ladder is indespensible.

Terryboc, the best pruners I've had are ARS brand. They are way superior to Felco and any other I've used. My boyfriend bought me a pair at a green industry trade show a couple of years ago, and I'm sold on them. You can try a search for ARS pruners and buy them online if no one carries them locally.

The tool I seem to be picking up the most this year is my trowel. I bought a new trowel two years ago at Lowes. Oh my, I love it! I bought two of them. They are stainless steel and have a comfortable grip. I used to go through trowels pretty quick, they would all rust when I would forget to put it away, but this stainless steel looks as good as when I bought it and I leave it out in all the weather every day.

Kitchen shears...I have taken to putting them in my back pocket..probably not a good idea. [g] I use them for deadheading and they work better than other scissors I have tried and are sturdy. They did a great job on cutting back grasses in the spring.

We bought an edger last year, again at Sears, that is one of those half circles. We had a lot of beds that needed edging and it made quick work of it with little effort.

Another favorite I wouldn't be without are the quick connect hose attachments. I wonder what we all did before those came on the market.

I couldn't leave out our two wheeler. We used that a LOT this year. Usually it gets used to move pots into place, unload materials from the van, but this year we were also constructing a patio etc in the yard and edging a border with heavy rocks, and it probably got used every day we were in the garden for months.

Hoses, nozzles and reels seem to be my annoyance as they are every year. I have had a hose from Sears for many years. I bet it's going on 10 years. It has never given me any trouble with leaking or splitting or kinking. It may be a rubber hose? I have two complaints with it though. One is that it is black and if I pull it along and it rubs against my pots, the black will come off on them. So I have placed a lot of hose guides to avoid doing that, but I still have to be very conscious of it. Second it seems very heavy to me when I am pulling it..lol. I suppose they all are. I would replace it if there was something better. I would love a nozzle that would stay on and not have to be held open. Patty, I don't have an Ocean State Job Lots near me, you don't happen to know the brand name of the one you bought do you?

I am very interested in the reels that use water pressure to roll up the hose. Terry, and Triciae did you buy them locally at a big Box Store or did you find it in a garden tool catalog? We seem to be leaving our hose out a lot. We have a hand crank reel, but just not using it.

LOL, Cady! we call 'em "Cindys", too! sometimes we even sing "we lop" instead of "she bop"... those are the only words we know to the song.

I love my red handled Felcos, my hand cultivator, and my spading fork. We also have a gadget that you place over a dandilion or plaintain in the lawn. You step down on it and then extract the offending weed, root and all. I like that one a lot.

I hacked up a toad with the weedwacker some years ago and haven't used it since. Too ridden with guilt, I really like toads (we have some really big ones here!).

Lately it's been the combo of my thumb and index finger. Because heat spurs growth, I've been having to pinch the container plants just about every night when I water. If they get too tough I resort to my Felcos, my favorite actual garden tool. For the past week just about every morning on my way to the garage I've been squishing japanese beetles as they frolick on my new purple leaf Corylus and one of my cannas. Those two plants appear to have become a JB den of iniquity. I've started keeping a napkin next to my car seat to wipe my fingers before heading off to work.

Sue

PrairieMoon,
I bought my hose reeler at HD, but I imagine they are pretty readily available.

I purchased my hose water wheels from QVC. They were a Today's Special Value a couple years ago & I purchased 3 of them.

Here's the company's web site...

Here is a link that might be useful: Hose Water Wheels

Thanks Terry and tricia! :-)

My favorite is probably my big pinch-point bar. I think I might be able to punch it through a car door.

My most used is probably my digging fork, with the wheelbarrow a second.

Dang it, Chelone... Now I'm gonna be humming "We lop..." all week! I'm putting off finishing the hedge pruning until after the Big Heat we're forecast to have tomorrow and Thursday. But then the Cindys are coming back out of the tool shed.

I had a lot of fun with a pole saw a few weeks ago, cutting back a hated kwanzan cherry, but my favorite has to be my trusty old Felcos, #6 size.

A couple of years ago I injured myself with them, cut a big gash at the base of my thumb chopping up twigs for the compost pile as the sun set. I cried like a baby, not so much because it hurt like heck but because I felt so ... betrayed by this old friend. That must sound really dumb, I know, but that's life in my garden.

Sue, love the image of the bug rag on the seat of the car! My fingers are definitely a close second favorite, in fact, if I had to choose, I'd toss the pruners. Just wish they made fake nails out of stainless steel, cause I could really use them, especially after a couple of hours weeding.