12 Garden Tools to Start Spring Right • Insteading

Can you feel it? That shift in the wind? The faint whiff of waking soil resounding with the chorus of sprightly spring peepers in the forest? Winter’s losing its grip, and for those of us with gardens and itchy green thumbs, the final thaw can’t come soon enough. It’s time to bust out the tools and get to work again.

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So appropriately, as the seasons turn, garden shops and home improvement stores are about to roll out the red carpet to vie for your dollars in exchange for seeds, starts, and a universe of gardening tools. You’ll find products out there designed to suit your every whim and inclination. Some of the more savvy among you, however, may well suspect that not every tool is useful or practical.

1. Pick Mattock

Pick Mattock - garden tools — Wren Everett // Insteading

我不知道在我的花园里没有鹤嘴锄我该怎么办。在春天、夏天和秋天，我信赖的鹤嘴锄一直在我的手中，随时准备执行我的命令。我通常不喜欢2合1类型的工具，但这实际上是有意义的。鹤嘴锄很容易将顽固的草丛连根拔起，并能在短时间内移动惊人数量的土壤。镐在清除地下岩石时非常有用。对于我们这些生活在岩石土壤上的人来说，能够移动土壤，撬出岩石，重新填满洞——所有这些都是用同一种工具?这使它成为一个了不起的工具。当我种植球茎和根茎时，它也是我的首选，要挖一个足够大、没有石头的洞，这样才能成功地完成工作。

2. Hori-Hori Knife

Japanese for “dig-dig,” this knife is an indispensable tool in many gardens. Good for harvesting roots, removing pernicious weeds, cutting through tree roots, loosening soil before planting, and digging neat slices of earth out of the ground before planting; you’ll wonder how you ever did it without this handy knife.

也就是说，不是每把刀都是一样的。我买了一个很受欢迎的名牌工具，标签上写着“堀菜刀”，刚好清仓，我很快就找到了它清仓的确切原因。The inexplicably forked tip was probably meant to be a weeding tool, but it completely weakened the knife’s integrity and snapped the first time I put it in the soil.

因此，我的建议是，避免任何似乎有现代化的，噱头元素的刀。说到菜刀，传统的菜刀形状是有原因的——它从16世纪就开始使用了。此外，在日本诞生地锻造的刀具质量可能会比美国的模仿者好得多。

3. Japanese Weeder

With a perfectly angled, sharp blade on a handle, this tool is ideal for garden bed maintenance. It slices neatly through most weeds (though it admittedly doesn’t handle grass clumps or woody growth quite as well). When it comes to routine, day-to-day weeding, this handy little weeder is easy to whip out and nip those unwanted plants in the bud, so to speak. As a bonus, it skates along the surface of the soil, leaving the layers undisturbed, and allowing you to quickly accumulate a tidy pile of greens to throw to the chickens or use as insta-mulch.

4. Pickaxe

If you’re establishing a new garden, the pickaxe is a lifesaver. I’ve tried breaking sod with a hoe (like I thought I was supposed to) and all I ended up with was a backache and a frustratingly small amount of work done. The pickaxe, however, rips through grass and soil with uncompromising fury, quickly turning an uncultivated field into a future hope for food sustainability. When your hand mattock is too small to lever out a boulder, the pickaxe fills in with its size and strength (and if you still can’t get that boulder out, call for the Brute Squad of the San Angelo Bar to finish the task).

5. Stirrup (aka Oscillating Scuffle) Hoe

The bladed head on this strange-looking hoe is supposed to be loosely attached, so don’t worry when you hear it wiggling. Used correctly, this hoe slices on both the push and pull stroke, cutting weeds while only disturbing the top quarter-inch of the soil. If you have established garden beds and don’t want to disturb the layers of richness you’ve worked so hard to achieve, the stirrup hoe can remove weeds effectively with surprisingly little effort. As a bonus, you can work it while standing up, saving your back from potential ache.

6. CobraHead

I don’t like recommending specific name brands unless I really like them, which is why I’m wholeheartedly recommending theCobraHead weeder and cultivator. This thing is basically a glorified fingernail, but it scrapes through soil in ways our own human fingers wouldn’t be able to manage. You’d be surprised how useful it can be. It can burrow under weed clumps and wrench them out and make a neat little furrow for planting seeds, and it has the weeding dexterity that larger hoes and tools lack. I’ve accidentally nicked or killed plants with heavier tools. It gives me a lot more control among leafy and tender plants.

7. Pitchfork

My pitchfork is vital to cleaning out animal houses. All that soiled bedding is worth its weight in gold to me, and the many-tined pitchfork I’ve photographed here does a great job of scooping it cleanly. That manure and old straw isn’t waste, of course. It’s magnificent, soil-improving mulch. If you are hard at work improving your garden soil, or mulching it with care, then pitchforks like these are excellent for layering mulch, manure, and leaves over a garden bed.

8. Sun Hat

We’re all guilty of it, probably. You only meant to head out to the garden for a minute, but found yourself weeding, harvesting, or enjoying the ripening tomatoes for far longer than intended. Now you can feel the sunburn heating your face, and your head hurts. Shoulda had a sun hat! Airy, broad-brimmed hats are a must for folks doing hard work in the bright summer sunshine. It really doesn’t matter how it looks — only that it keeps you cool and covers that sensitive back of your neck.

9. Garden Harvest Basket

I used to carry a picturesque basket from the thrift store to bring in my harvests, but it didn’t stand up to getting wet or muddy very well. Though it’s not as appealing, this sturdy tote from Fiskars是一个很好的合作伙伴，当它带来了一车太阳成熟的农产品。我喜欢它有一个滤锅部分，用来冲洗泥泞的树根，因为这样在我去厨房之前更容易清理。这个部门还允许我在收获时对蔬菜进行分类，把完美无缺的西红柿、干净的生菜叶子和沾满灰尘的洋葱分开。

10. Grass Sickle

Not only will you look downright intimidating wielding this formidable blade, you’ll be able to finally get the grass trimmed in those awkward places. I use this tool for trimming the grass that encroaches the edges of my fenced garden where the string-trimmer and mower can’t reach. It’s also excellent for cutting handfuls of dried grasses when you want to hand-harvest a small amount of grain or some dry bedding.

11. Roo Gardening Apron

Full disclosure: My own gardening apron is a rather janky homemade affair and I haven’t used these, but Kane at Insteading heartily recommends these waterproof gardening aprons. They have a roomy pocket for on-the-go harvesting, and are extremely durable. You can get themhereat our sister site, Pantry Paratus.

12. Heavy-Duty Hoe

The hoe I have pictured here isn’t just any hoe. It’s a monster of a hoe forged of old agricultural implements, giving it a much heartier heft (the one pictured here is fromRogue Hoe). As you may surmise, my gardens are new enough that I’m still trying to improve the stony soil and get stubborn bluegrass clumps out from between my tomato starts. As such, the lightweight hoes sold in garden stores barely make a dent in the still-being-developed beds. Not so with this hefty thing. Though it will give you a workout, it doesn’t hold back when it comes to chopping rough soil.

After you’ve tired yourself out with the pickaxe, a heavy hoe like this comes in as the second level of attack. Someday, perhaps I’ll be able to hang up the hoe for good and take a no-till approach to my garden. For now, this beast and I still have some important work ahead of us.