Growing Wise : garden tools

Pre-Season

Elisabeth — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:21:00 GMT

In many parts of the country, March is coming in like a lion, with snowstorms and other reminders that winter isn't officially over. What can you do while you are waiting for spring?

Sharpen your tools.

If you are like most people, your garage or basement or tool shed is full of dull loppers, pruners and clippers. You probably have a dull spade sitting around somewhere too. Gardening is much more pleasurable if you use good tools and keep them in good shape. If you think about it, even your spade is designed for cutting--it is just made to cut through soil instead of stalks or branches. It will cut through the soil much more efficiently if it is sharpened.

If you don't want to get involved in tool sharpening, ask about professional sharpening services at your local garden center or hardware store. Some may be listed in standard or online yellow page directories. There are also many do-it-yourself gadgets on the market, including the simplest, which is called a mill file or a *** mill file. Your local hardware store can sell you one and probably give you instructions on how to use it.

Tool sharpening doesn't take all that long and it yields highly satisfying results. Having sharp tools may actually inspire you to get out and use them when the time comes.

What a knife!

Elisabeth — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:48:00 GMT

If you had to, you could make a garden using only a few basic tools. You would definitely need a shovel or spade, a rake and a trowel. Most people need a watering can as well, but that's about it.

Of course the vast majority of gardeners have lots of tools--frequently too many. For some reason I find it hard to throw tools away--even those I never use. I generally keep a particular tool because of what it may have done for me in the past or what it might do for me in the future or because I feel so guilty about getting rid of something that is still perfectly good.

Notwithstanding the pile of unused tools in the garage, the tool that I depend on most in the garden is my soil knife. This piece of equipment, which is about eleven inches long, with a six-inch blade, is descended from a Japanese instrument called the hori knife of sometimes the hori hori knife. It is meant to be an all-purpose garden helper.

The blade is about 1 1/2 inches wide, so that it can be used as either a narrow trowel or a weeding implement. To weed out deep-rooted nuisances like dandelions or onion grass, simply insert the soil knife next to the offending weed, dig down six inches and twist. You will get the weed out, roots and all, every time.

One side of the blade has a serrated edge, making it useful for sawing through tough, woody stems or even very small branches. Instead of taking your clippers and trowel with you every time you take a turn around the garden, take the soil knife in its convenient holster. You can trim and weed with the same tool.

I like the soil knife for planting individual bulbs, weeding in sidewalk and driveway cracks and for trimming the occasional wayward branch off my privet hedge. It is also very good for brandishing at the groundhog, though neither he nor I would know what to do once the brandishing phase was over.

A soil knife does just what I want a good garden tool to do--it makes my life easier every time I take it out.

Healthy Tools

Elisabeth — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:21:00 GMT

It's eleven o'clock. Do you know where your tools are? And more to the point, do you know what condition they're in?

Tools do a lot of the hard work in the garden--digging, clipping, uprooting weeds--and often get very little care. Think about your garden tools. Nine chances out of ten they're spending the winter in your basement or garage. They are probably dull, dirty and stored randomly in a basket or box or even lying on the floor. The ones that work best with sharp edges probably haven't been sharpened in some time.

Now is the perfect time to rectify all of that. Take a look at your tools. Throw out the ones that simply don't work any more. Gather up the clippers, loppers and spades, all of which should be kept sharp, and clean them. Sharpen the edges yourself or find a professional sharpener to do the job for you. When the sharpening is done, oil hinges and other mechanisms, then store in a dry place.

Other tools like trowels, shovels and rakes should be cleaned, with steel wool if necessary, and returned to proper storage.

If you store your tools in a random way, now is also the time to come up with a better system. It doesn't need to be fancy. Some people hang all their tools from hooks affixed to a pegboard that is in turn affixed to a garage or cellar wall. Some people store the most frequently used tools in a basket or bucket. Others store the tall tools like rakes, hoes and spades in a large garbage can. Whatever your system, store the tools where they are easy to get to. That way you'll be more likely to return them to the storage spot when you're finished using them.

Imagine what it would be like to start the spring gardening season with your tools in optimum working condition. Caring for your tools now, might just lead to a better garden next summer.

The Great Equalizer

Elisabeth — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 13:45:00 GMT

I think of gardening as a great equalizer. You don't have to be rich to grow beautiful plants and have a great home landscape. You can fertilize your garden with lots of money or just a little money and a lot of ingenuity. You can purchase amazing plants from expensive boutique nurseries, or you can create great plant combinations with specimens from your local "big box" store. Some of the best gardens start on a shoestring.

Suppose you are a novice gardener. First you need some basic gardening knowledge. Between the Internet and your local public library, you can learn everything you need to know without purchasing anything extra. Most local libraries are part of interlibrary loan networks, so you have easy access to older or less well known books as well as recent garden guides.

Once you have the knowledge, you need a few basic tools, including a trowel, spade, rake, hoe, watering can, etc. Shops and catalogs are full of wonderful, expensive models of all those tools, but if you frequent garage or tag sales, you can probably find all of them for only a few dollars. Discount stores also have excellent inexpensive garden tools, not to mention gloves and hats.

The cheapest way to get a garden going is to grow plants from seed. Some can be started indoors on sunny windowsills, but many ornamental and food crops can be sown directly in the ground as soon as all danger of frost is past. If you are starting plants from seed, choose a mixture of fast-growing annuals like zinnias, cosmos and sunflowers, plus some hardy perennials, which take longer to get established. Other gardeners are also a great source of free plants. All you have to do is put the word out among your friends, especially in the spring, and you will find yourself the recipient of divisions of hostas, daylilies, Shasta daisies and other prolific plants.

When you can afford to buy plants from local, catalog or online nurseries, choose wisely. While the flashy new plants are always tempting, sometimes it is better to choose tried and true performers if you're on a tight budget.

Mulch is a great boon to most plants and cuts weeding chores. If you have friends with pine trees, ask if you can gather the pine straw that accumulates under the trees. It makes a wonderful soft mulch. Compost is another good mulch and soil conditioner. Start a pile in a corner of the garden. Add organic material and water and turn it daily and you'll have good compost in a couple of months. If you have room for two piles--one active pile and one "cooking" pile--all the better.

Remember that anything from a yogurt container to an old paint bucket can function as a plant pot.

In these times when many of us have to think about economizing, it's reassuring to know that you can start or maintain a garden without breaking the bank. Look around you--everything you need for a great garden is probably close at hand.

Garden Goods

Elisabeth — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 22:35:00 GMT

Yesterday the weather was foul--too foul to work outside, even though my front walk was completely blanketed with fallen leaves. Leaving our sad looking yard and garden behind, my husband and I set out to visit antique shops in a town not far away.

I like to gawk at high end antique furniture and other things that I cannot afford, but what I look for on these trips are pieces of "gardenalia". Gardenalia can be interesting old tools, baskets, plant pots or vases, not to mention worthwhile gardening books, old catalogs and magazines. If you go to the right places--usually shops that are a little dusty and disorganized, you can sometimes find some interesting items. Not all of them will be antiques, but many will be better constructed and cost less than their newly manufactured counterparts.

Last summer I found a shop that displayed several old-fashioned wire egg baskets in a back room. I bought one for a very good price, filled it with a coir liner, potting soil and a large ivy-leafed geranium and displayed it on my front porch. The egg basket also had a sturdy handle, so it would also have made a good hanging basket.

I still treasure a 1947 garden catalog that I bought for one dollar a few years ago. It's fascinating to see what has changed in gardening in the past sixty years and what has remained the same.

Yesterday I considered any number of baskets, but I ended up coming home with Flowering Houseplants and Foliage Houseplants, both from The Time Life Encyclopedia of Gardening, which was published in 1971. The primary author of both volumes was James Underwood Crockett, a noted nurseryman and writer who was also the very first host of the PBS "Victory Garden" series that is still produced by Boston station WGBH. The books are extremely accessible and comprehensive with great illustrations. I paid four dollars for the two volumes, and have already assigned them to a prominent place on my garden library shelf.

I also came home with three little terra cotta flower pots made by the now-defunct Ward firm of Darlaston, Staffordshire, England. They are elegant little four-inch diameter vessels, miniature versions of the classic English "long tom" pots. They are perfect for young plants. Two of them will be home to the immature clivia and jasmine plants that I recently acquired. They aren't particularly old, but they weren't particularly expensive, and they will look handsome in my indoor garden.

In these times when we are once again espousing the "reduce, recycle and re-use" philosophy, I can't think of a more entertaining way to acquire inexpensive gardenalia than prowling through tag sales, flea markets and antique shops.