Category: Garden Tools

In the articles below, discover the best garden tools for vegetable gardening. See comparisons of tools, short-lists of favorites, and learn whether those super-specific one-purpose tools are ever worth the buy.

There are many useful gardening tools out there, all at different price points. When purchasing your garden tools, think about versatility. How many different ways can you use a particular tool? Most-used garden tools are simple in form, budget-friendly, and can be used for at least three or four different tasks.

It’s tempting to roam the aisles of a big box home and garden store and scoop up everything you could possibly need to build a garden tool kit. The smell of fertilizer and peat moss wafting in the air. The polished concrete floors, helping your shopping cart glide like butter to the checkout. 

Our advice when building a garden tool kit? Keep it simple! Seasoned gardeners don’t use all those doodads and gadgets you can find lining the gardening aisles. 

As for weeding? To rake or to spray, that is the question! Like many garden tools, you can go all out and spend hundreds of dollars on a Lithium-ion, cordless weed killer sprayer. But weed killers can be pretty icky, especially when going near vegetables. As for weeding tools, there’s really no shortage to choose from. Generally speaking, there are two types of weeding tools: short-handled and long-handled. Short-handled tools can let you be a little more precise and you only need one hand to use most of them. The downside is that you have to sit or bend over to use them. Long-handled tools are nice because you can stand and they also give you more leverage. However, these usually require two hands and it’s not unheard of to damage one of your vegetables if your aim is a little off. With that in mind, here are some of our favorite weeding tools.

In the articles below, we dive into everything you need to know about garden tools, and you can learn more about them in our How to Grow a Vegetable Garden: 10 Things Every Gardener Needs to Know Before Starting a Food Garden freebie. Enjoy!

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Garden Tools

What is My USDA Planting Zone?

USDA planting zone

The mysterious USDA planting zone (aka plant hardiness zone) isn’t all that mysterious once you get to know it. It’s like the overlooked love interest in every 80’s RomCom. Always there in plain sight. Always ignored. Then one day, you wake up and realize that no, you can’t plant a banana tree in Maine. But you could have the best darn blueberries in the world. If only you had noticed earlier that your USDA planting zone was there telling you all along that blueberries are the way to go. 

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Garden Tools

Choosing the Best Shovel for Your Gardening Needs

A shovel is a shovel is a shovel. Unless we’re talking about the best shovel. Then there are all sorts of shovels. Short-handled, long-handled, rounded, round-point, square-point, serrated, trenching shovels, ditching shovels, digging spade, garden spade, perennial spade, and scoops.

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Garden Tools

This Countertop Compost Machine Turns Scraps into Compost in a Few Hours

Spoiler alert: It’s safe to say there’s no gardening gadget or device I love more than the countertop compost machine I’m sharing with you today. Instead of keeping a stinky compost bucket under your sink, then plopping into a heap outside, Lomi’s countertop compost machine can turn scraps into compost in just a few hours. […]

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Garden Tools

The 5 Best Cold Frames According to Food Gardeners

I have always been a bit of a lazy gardener. I love to plant things, and I love to take care of them and watch them grow. But sometimes by the time fall swings around, I decide to let everything else go to the chipmunks and the birds. This year, I’ve decided that I’m going to […]

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Garden Tools

The Best Weeding Tool for Your Vegetable Garden

Goat nibbling tomato plant.

Okay, maybe it’s a bit tongue in cheek to say that the best weeding tool for your vegetable garden is a goat. But did you know that some office parks and building managers actually hire goats to clear fields? It’s true. And is there anything cuter than a baby goat? Maybe, but I wouldn’t bet a lot of money on it.

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Garden Tools

How to Grow Potatoes in a Bag

The decision to learn how to grow potatoes in a bag is not one to be taken lightly. Are you short on garden space but still want a crop of universally delicious starch bombs? Or maybe you like science experiments. You probably fall somewhere between Mr. Wizard and Bill Nye in age and have always been drawn to DIY science like crystal-growing, rock-tumbling, and figuring out which dish soap makes the best bubble solution.

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Garden Tools

7 Preventable Garden Injuries and Mistakes

No one wants to think about garden injuries or the mistakes that lead to those injuries. I know I don’t. A garden is a place of joy and happiness. It’s where we go to destress and commune with nature. Gardens provide beauty and nourishment.  That’s all true. But my back might have a few more […]

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Garden Tools

12 Cool Gardening Tools and Gifts for the Plant Lover in Your Life

A basket of gardening tools

Gift-giving for the plant-lover in your life can be tricky, especially if you think they already have everything they need. Imagine your loved one opening a holiday or birthday gift with excitement and anticipation, only to unveil a 20lb bag of potting soil. Sure, it’ll be useful, but it doesn’t exactly have the wow-factor you may be looking for. I’ve put together a list of 5 cool gardening tools for the plant-lover in your life that I think are thoughtful, unique, and useful. (And are NOT a bag of dirt!)

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Garden Tools

A Spring Gardening Checklist to Grow Your Best Plants Ever

Friends, it is officially spring. The sun is out, the skies are blue, and the local flora and fauna are appearing. There’s a robin in a tree near my window sitting in his new nest, and the daffodils are spreading their colorful joy all over the place. Of course, I’m in New England, so it’s […]

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Garden Tools

The Best Tool for Digging Holes for Plants Revealed

Gardening tools

Some years ago, when I was a kid, I planted my first “garden.” It wasn’t exactly what you might recognize as a garden, and unless you count rocks, there wasn’t really anything growing in my garden. But the holes I dug were world class. Probably because, in all the wisdom of my single-digit years, I knew I had the best tool for digging holes for plants: a stick.