Really Handy Equipment for your Garden Toolbox

It’s really easy to forget some of the garden tools we don’t use every day so in this article, I’ve compiled a list of a few that are sorely missed when we need them for our garden.

Hand Pruners – Essential in any garden toolbox!

Most gardeners take pride in their hand pruners. They find it very useful for trimming leaves, arranging stem of the plants and taking out dead roots.

Once you have purchased your hand pruner, it is important that you take care of your tool so you can use it to its maximum efficiency. Once you are done with your gardening, remove all the soil, dirt and debris with the help of a cloth – we don’t use them much and it’ll be all too easy to come back to them in poor condition months later.

Avoid using water; as it can corrode the metal. Oil your pruners every once in a while. Oiling will keep its movement fluent. When you feel like you have to exert extra force in cutting, sharpen the blade of your pruners. You can do so by running the length of the blade on a sharpening stone or a diamond hand file. Make sure that you are making smooth and quick strokes.

Another thing that you take care of is adjusting the tension of pruners. Don’t make the blades extra tight or you will have to apply a lot of pressure while using it. Similarly, keeping the blades lose will make it snap on the long branches. Just keep it at moderate tightness and it will work just fine.

Hori Hori

Hori hori is also known as the Japanese gardener’s knife, soil knife and the weeding knife. It has a sharp edge at the end of a curved center. You can use it to dig the dead roots of the plants, arrange the soil, weeding, measuring and planting bulbs, splitting perennials, cutting sod and various other gardening chores. In addition, its single blade makes the cleaning process easier. You can wipe the blade on a piece of cloth and it will be clean of all the dirt and debris. Hori hori comes in different sizes ranging from eleven to fifteen inches. Gardeners who use this tool claim that this tool saves them a lot of time.

The blade of this knife is quite sharp. It can easily pass through soil, woody plant stems and cut the branches of small shrubs. Plus every knife has a wooden handle so that you won’t lose your grip on the knife. You can easily find this gardening tool in a lot of online and land-based stores and they are not so expensive. A good quality professional knife comes within the £40 range.

Small Hand Rake Variations

You know that the larger version of rake is used for removing dead leaves from the flower bed and preparing soil for seeds. The same work is performed with the help of the miniature rake version as well.

The hand rakes that are available in the market are usually made up of bamboo, metal or plastic. The scratchy blade part of the small rake is almost similar to that of its large sized version; the only difference is in the length of its handle. There are two types of hand rakes:

Shrub Rake — It has a triangle structure, narrow form the top and wide from the bottom. The end of the triangular section is in the form of curved metal. The curve allows the metal to easily penetrate the soil.

Bow Rake — The structure of this rake is different from that of shrub rake. It is flat and leveled. Moreover, its tines are different from a shrub rake’s. They are made of metal, shorter in length

and thicker in size. If you are a gardening beginner then you will definitely benefit with this tool.

All of these tools fit nicely in a garden tool box and should not be overlooked. Some are essential tools and others would just be really useful to have as and when required in the garden!