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!
When I started my very first vegetable garden, I must have lingered in my garden center’s aisles for over an hour trying to figure out what were the tools needed to start a garden. I was overcome with analysis paralysis – that thing that happens when there are too many options (usually in flashy colors) and in this case with some kind of lite rock music playing in the background. I ended up buying more than I needed and years later I have unopened tools still collecting dust in my garage.
Oh, the perfect garden bed. ‘Tis a dream of every gardener. But if you’re used to using a hoe, rake, spade, or other hand tools, a garden tiller, despite its helpfulness, can feel a bit intimidating. It’s kind of like riding a bike, then switching over to a car with a manual transmission. There’s nothing wrong with either, and if you’re just heading to the grocery store for some eggs and cheese, the bike is just fine. However, the car is probably a better option for that family vacation two states over.
When I started my first vegetable garden I went a little tool-crazy. I bought every type of shovel, shear, and weeding gadget marketed to me at big box home and garden stores. If it had a catchy logo and was highlighted on an end cap aisle, there’s a good chance I bought it. At the end of that first year, I took stock of my shed and noticed that many of the tools I had bought were only used once.
