Your labor will be easier and more productive if you use the proper instrument for each yard task. There are numerous tools available in a variety of shapes and sizes. With this list of garden tools, you can quickly learn about the essential equipment you’ll need and streamline your buying.
Consider how the tool will feel after a few hours of use while choosing the best garden equipment for the job. Keep in mind that larger tools will be heavier. Although larger tools may be more effective, make sure to pick one that won’t exhaust you too quickly. To make the labor more comfortable, look for tools with padded grips.
Spades, garden shovels, and other digging implements
One of the most popular landscaping tools and the workhorse of the garden shed is the garden shovel. In essence, spades are just a smaller, flatter-bladed shovel. Other useful garden tools allow you to plant and transplant bulbs and tiny plants, as well as dig holes for posts.
- Round-Point Shovel: This gardening tool is excellent for lifting, moving, and tossing soil. While the rim on the top of the shovel blade provides for increased foot pressure when digging holes, the round point of the shovel cuts into the earth.
- A square-point shovel is great for moving objects. A large scoop is another name for a shovel with square points.
- Garden spade: This tool, which resembles a square-pointed shovel, is excellent for lifting sod and digging.
- Drain Spade: This tool is designed for working in confined locations and has a thin, rounded head and a straight grip. It works well for transplanting as well as for excavating trenches.
- Trenching Spade: This tool has a thin head similar to a drain spade, but it is pointed and angled more acutely for better leverage. It is useful for trench clearing and digging, as well as for planting trees and bushes.
- Post Hole Digger: This is a tool that, until you need one, may seem like a luxury item. Post hole diggers allow for somewhat better accuracy and deeper digging than a shovel.
Pitchforks and Rakes
Rakes come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Depending on the material they will be used to move, pitchforks are also made in various forms and with various numbers and sizes of tines.
- Leaf Rake: Use this rake to move debris such as grass clippings and leaves. The flexible steel or poly tines are effective in separating grass from yard waste. There are several different sizes of leaf rakes.
- Garden Rake: You can break and scratch through hard ground with this rake’s short, stiff steel tines. Compost and mulch can also be moved with its assistance. You can smooth down loose material, such as mulch and gravel, using the flat bar.
- Thatch Rake: This instrument is made specifically to rake thatch off of turf.
- Bedding Fork: This device, which has rounded, curving tines, is good for moving lots of loose material, such as hay, mulch, and straw.
- The manure fork has a similar shape to the bedding fork, but its tines can support greater loads.
- Spading fork: This implement is used to turn soil, pull plants and bulbs, and separate perennials. It has flat tines. When digging in rocky terrain, a spading fork is less upsetting to the user than a shovel. Additionally, it helps aerate and relieve compacted soil.
Garden hoes
Another basic tool used for weeding and lightly breaking ground. There are numerous variations in skull size and form.
- Standard Garden Hoe: This implement has a square blade for chopping that is positioned at a right angle to the handle.
- The Warren Hoe is more suited for planting than weeding. The V-shaped blade serves two functions. The open top can close the furrows while the pointed end creates ridges.
- Weeding/Two-Prong Hoe: This tool has sharp tips on one end for pulling weeds up by the roots and a flat blade on the other end for cutting.
- Action Hoe: The action hoe’s head pivots back and forth under the soil to chop weeds. Whether you push or pull, the blade cuts.
Saws and other cutting instruments
You might require each of these various cutting tools depending on your landscape plantings.
- Pruning Saw: This instrument functions best in a constrained workspace. Working with the saw is simple because it cuts on the pull stroke, especially from a ladder. The cut is more precisely made when a saw has more teeth. For larger limbs, use saws with huge teeth.
- Bow Pruning Saw: When the cut is blocked, this saw is used to make rapid cuts on big limbs.
When loppers can’t reach, use a pole pruner to make overhead cuts. Pole pruners eliminate the need to climb or use a ladder when performing upper-tier pruning with a cutter or a saw. The cutter is controlled from the ground up by a rope and pulley. The cutting range is expanded by telescoping poles.
Other Landscape Instruments
Other hand tools exist that can facilitate gardening tasks in addition to the more well-known garden tools.
- Mattock: This tool can be used for heavy ground work and comes with a variety of blade styles. You can buy mattocks with various combinations of flat blades or picks to break up the soil, cutting blades to cut through roots, and tilling blades to help turn the soil.
- Cultivator: Cultivators are tools for preparing the soil for planting or for use around plants as they develop. They can be purchased as hand tools or ones with long handles. For larger operations, there are additional types that run on gas and electricity.
- Weeder/Grass Blade: Also called a sling blade, this forerunner of the string trimmer swings back and forth and features a blade that is sharp on both sides for cutting grass and weeds.
Heads and handles of tools
There are different handle styles available for some tools. Depending on your particular preferences and the level of use, choose:
- Short handles are ideal for confined work spaces but demand more leg power.
- Long handles provide a greater reach and greater leverage but require more arm strength. Depending on your height, you might be bending a lot. Short handles tend to be heavier than longer handles since they are frequently thicker and sometimes feature a grip on the handle. For better control and grip, short-handled shovels, spades, and forks can be found with D-handles or D-grips.
Remember that forged tools are stronger and heat-tempered than tools that are stamped from metal sheets when selecting the appropriate tools for your gardening needs.
