What are your 5 favorite gardening tools or items?

Mine are: diamond hoe, hand spade, garden fork and high wheel hand cultivator.

1. hat
2. hula hoe
3. dibble
4. seed planter
5. rototiller

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It's not good enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required. - Winston Churchill

It is plain to see that the illness has already broken out this year. Must be the excess snow causing that yearning to play in the dirt and mud.

I wouldn't quite call it a favorite tool, but I flat out would not garden without my tiller.

Tools I use the most ...

1. A pick. I find this actually works better than a shovel for digging in heavy clay soil. I snagged mine out of someone's garbage -- now who throws away a perfectly good pick? Yet someone did. Oy!

2. Hand pruners. Lots of brambles here.

3. and 4. Wheelbarrow and pitchfork. Lots of bedding and manure to move around.

5. Rake. Lots of trees!

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"I love all of this mud," said no one, ever.

there are a great variety of picks, mattocks, grub hoes, etc. Though you wont see much of a selection at your local hardware. And the specialty garden tool places seem to think they are made of solid gold. A pick unless you have hardpan to go through or extremely rocky soil, is probably overkill. A narrow bladed mattock would probably be more efficient.

The only reason I cut the pick part off on my Chinese mattock is that the Chinese designer made it bit on long side and thus bit more dangerous than necessary. Didnt need pick puncturing my skull. But cutting off the pick part also made the now Chinese grub hoe a bit lighter and more balanced somehow.

I also have in past bought some worn out grub hoes/picks at various auctions (they go very cheap usually) and welded on differing widths of old leaf spring off truck/car to renew them into usefulness again. You can go upto around 6 inches. Lets you be bit more efficient if you have the strength and if soil conditions permit.

And there are some narrow light weight mattocks. I have one that uses an ax handle rather than a pick handle. And there are some modern ones with long handle even lighter weight sold to be used like you would a regular garden hoe. They work rather well if light enough. Had one but it disappeared so guess somebody else appreciated it even more. Wouldnt be hard to make one out of bit of narrow leaf spring. For making hoe, main thing is to get the blade at a comfortable angle for what you intend using it for and for your height. I was playing making a hoe out of an old worn horse drawn cultivator shoe I'd dug out of ground. First welded handle at more or less 90 degree angle to blade and it was horrible. Narrowed the angle to match my old grape hoe and it works nearly as well as the grape hoe. None of this is rocket science, just takes some experimenting to find what works for you.

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"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

Mine has a wide head on one side and narrow on the other. I use the narrow to pry out rocks, the wide to dig with. Really handy. It weighs like a dead priest, though, and I could wish the handle were a bit longer, but considering what I paid for it, I can't really complain. LOL

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"I love all of this mud," said no one, ever.

I have four foot wide passive beds, so I built a wood square 4 foot by 4 foot (with 2 inch x 1 inch strips) , that has ropes every 6 inches attached with fencing nails from one side to the other. i place it on the bed and the rows are marked for me (going across the beds). when i am done i just move the square so i can plant the next 4 x 4 foot square,
this would be better if 2 people were working, right now i have to walk around the bed to plant the other side and move the square by my self, but it still saves time. I've been using this method of planting for 4 years now.
Other than that I use a pitch fork for digging and a couple of different hoes for the pathes between the beds. And 2 different wheel barrows.

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squashnut & bassketcher

Champagne D Argent, White New Zealand & Californian Cross Rabbits

How about a neighbor with 4 kids???

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Home is the hunter, home from the hill, and the sailor home from the sea...

Picks come in two styles. One has pointy on both sides, the other has pointy on one side and other is like inch wide.

Mattock traditionally has about 3 inch horizontal blade on one side and a sort of crude vertical ax looking blade on other to chop at roots. More modern mattocks have pointy pick on one side and the 3 inch horizontal blade on the other. A grub hoe is mattock with only the 3 inch horizontal blade.

Totally agree you got the good price....

Bet you would like lighter mattock with the ax handle. Though next step lighter duty has traditionally been the grape hoe. Heavier than standard garden hoe, but lighter than a grub hoe or mattock. Longer handle than mattock/pick. Its still a digging hoe, not a cultivating hoe, but more for digging previously tilled ground. Mattocks are intended more for digging in soil with rocks and roots and such that hasnt been tilled before. A good grape hoe, short of making your own, is hard to find anymore. Just the high dollar specialty places or if you luck into an old one at auction or antique store or such.

Gosh darn its cold, just slipped out to take couple pictures.

Here is my grape hoe:



Here is simular homemade from cultivator shoe that works amazingly well:



Here is the narrow ax handle type mattock without handle:



Heres kind of a neat blog around somebody's inherited grape hoe:

http://leslieland.com/2009/04/the-italian-rototiller/

__________________
"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman