<3 25 years in the same garden, that’s the dream <3
I should add that although I started adding leaves, weeds, grass clippings and even went outside the yard and harvested topsoil, for a long time I still used that stupid tiller to mix it all in.
The ease of working the soil, pulling up a big weed and things like that didn’t happen until I stopped using the tiller. Now I have to dig over a foot deep to find the yellowish colored clay and even at that depth it has holes in it where roots have rotted, or worms are living. I think before small particles produced from the tiller were washing down and filling spaces like that up, keeping it in a perpetual state of tilled, as deep as the tiller went, with a packed bottom underneath.
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Without question, grub hoe. The old fashioned kind with short handle.
A random thing I’ve been finding really helpful this year is a tablespoon with a slightly pointy tip. It’s solid metal, with no joins or weak spots, so it’s stronger and doesn’t bend like my cheap gardening trowel does.
It’s working great for transplanting little seedlings that I started in tupperwares. I use it to dig soil out of a hole about an inch in diameter and two inches down, then I use it I scoop up a seedling with as minimal disturbance of its roots as possible, then I place it in the hole and use my hands to push the soil into the hole around the seedlings’ roots.
For transplants, I’m using clear tupperwares. No holes in the bottom. They’re transparent, which means I can check the water level at a glance, and thus choose not to water them until they’re dried out. Way more convenient, and no mess and wasted water that way. I put approximately 25 seeds in each one, 20 or so of which grow into nice transplants. The roots tangle together a bit, but it’s not hard to disentangle them with a bit of gentleness, and it’s WAY more convenient than individual walls for each plant.
I’ve tried individual walls for each plant. (I’ve tried seedling trays, plastic cups, and pots.) I don’t like it at all. The soil dries out way more quickly, and the plants tend to die way more easily as a result. When they’re settled in together in one large tupperware, the soil moisture stays even, and they usually only need another cup or so of water every three or four days.
Oh, yeah, and germinating them is so easy in tupperwares. I just put seeds on top of the soil and put the lid on top, so the moisture stays at exactly the right level. I got clear lids, so I can see at a glance if they’ve germinated, and I only remove the lid once they have and are tall enough to need it removed. So convenient!
This month, I’m experimenting with leaving those covered tupperwares outside and not using my grow light at all in the summer. I’d prefer to direct sow, but I’m starting to like using the tupperwares to get faster and higher germination, not to mention protecting them from being eaten by bugs while they’re too tiny to survive it.
I think I’m liking the idea of sowing some transplants at the same time as direct sowing, just in case the bugs eat all of Plan A.
If starting transplants outside after frost ends up working, that will eliminate my reliance on electricity in order to start transplants, which would make transplants a very viable option long-term. If all I’ll ever need (apart from sun, water, native soil, and seeds) is a metal spoon and some plastic tupperwares, that’s sustainable in an emergency.
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The hori-hori knife is something I couldn’t live without.
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Eye Hoe and pollination tool for different purposes. Weeding around and cross pollinating tomatoes. Also a nice sieve for rinsing tomato seeds after fermentation.
As i get older i realise the importance of sharp tools.
This drainage shovel ( needs sharpening ) , is a gamechanger. It’s fun digging a deep hole now.
Chuck it full of water. Some composted manure in the bottom, top that off with a bit of the soil just dug out. Put the plant back in.
As the garden project matures the perennial plants shade out more and more grass. I use my scythe more often so much lighter than a bush wacker and that needs to be réally sharp. Giving me a nice break to catch my breath while scything.
I made a new tool, it’s just a hoe. I made the blade smaller, cut it with a grinder and then weld it back together how i wanted it. Like 2 inch wide hoe on a long stick.
Handy, because my style of gardening requires precision weeding.
The bit on the side i made another thing with.
It’s more a push and kill apparatus.
On a long stick as well, so less bending down…
Handy, i ain’t getting much younger every passing year i notice.
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Hori-Hori! I’ve got 3 in case I can’t find one at any given moment.
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Oooh! I gave myself a hori hori knife as a birthday present last year. It has turned out to be so much better than the gardening spade I was using before. I can easily dig down deep to put in transplants, or to get out weed roots, with that thing.
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Haha, lost mine yesterday! Fell somewhere out of the builderspouch. I’ve got one extra but it’s for lefthanded folk, serraded blade on the wrong side. Is hould spraypaint that handle fluorescend bright orange!
I want to have more left-handed tools. I’m right-handed, but I’d prefer to be ambidextrous, so I try to use both hands for most things. It’s very useful to be able to switch hands, based on which hand is in a better state to work with a tool right now.
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I get it. Working with both sides when the other one is tired or injured is major. I’m as tall as most women. Tools and handles are just too big. But i can still get away with it because i’m very very strong, i mean i can open lids-strong! I look at the tools people work with openmouthed. 60 designs with 20 inch wide spades people use, better to shovel snow with. No wonder people don’t get around to planting those trees this year.
My trenchshovel broke it’s handle. I replaced it with an ash branch, less likely to get stolen now. But i invested in a fully iron one Handke too,. It only gets to go outside on special missions. Ta-ta-de-taaaa,Ta-de-taa. Insert A-team tune.
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Steak knife and secateurs for chopping/cutting mulch. Lots of others too but these two I use the most.
For the actual gardening:
- gloves
- small trowel
- kitchen spoon (to use as a smaller trowel)
- teaspoon (when even the kitchen spoon is too big – mostly for handling tiny seedlings, though I try not to need to handle them)
- secateurs
- scissors and twine
- shallow hoe
- deeper pointier hoe
- watering can
- watering buckets (5 gallon bucket with a small hole in the bottom: I put it in the middle of the bed with a brick in it so it doesn’t blow away, and then fill it with water, and it will trickle-water the area around it rather than water getting splashed everywhere and evaporating instantly; in hot dry years I will make a depression in the soil/compost to put these in, and plant around them)
- far too many bags made of far too many materials, sizes etc for carrying produce home from the allotment
- bike trailer, for squash and spud harvest days
I also have a trenching spade (for digging deep holes), garden rake, leaf rake, digging fork (don’t use this much tbh), dibber, and a funny device for pulling taproots. I’d love a broadfork. I have some grow lights and heat mats indoors for things like peppers, though I’d like to move to doing more of this sort of season extension on covered hotbeds instead if I can work out which things will be okay in the lower light levels we get outside at “time to sow peppers”.
For the composting:
- wheelbarrow
- compost fork/manure fork (lighter and with longer tines and handle than a digging fork) for turning compost
- secateurs again (I chop things up pretty small)
- garden rake, for evening out the layers when I build a heap
- a few big plastic trugs/bins I use to soak woodchips in, ideally I would soak every woodchip layer for 24h before building a heap but I don’t have that much soaking space so tend to just do one somewhere in the middle and one or two near the top, and resign myself to maybe having to water the heap when I turn it (I turn once, usually, sometimes twice).
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I have something a bit like hori-hori knife fors transplants.
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two scythes, one long thin, one short and thick
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a long plastic meter (100m -300inches) for implanting species, lines, etc.
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a 50meter rope on which I have standards spacings of 33cm (1foot) and 50cm (1,56foot). I used those past year for implanting my cucurbits… for example transplants of squash every 1m. Of melons every 66 or 50cm, etc. And all my direct seedings were every 33cm so to be able to select a bit. I found this rope very useful.
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to do long series of direct seeding I used that manual seeder
Very useful, because very fast on long distances, and you don’t hurt your back anytime. You just have to have a tank filled with seeds on your side, and then you add one or many seeds each time.
Since I have bought 2 others used manual seeders with tanks incorporated. Will let you know if it is any better and for doing what. -
then my wheelbarrow, essential for many things.
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I have about 100 of these crates
I use them for making transplants, and to dry all the big seeds and all the big quantities I can harvest, using an additionnal layer of anti-mouse veil to protect them from those.
What is handy is that you can can fold and pile them.
here on formerly “hot” beds, so here around april… nearly ready for transplants
or here…
Not very handy for watermelons though
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an home-made plank like this, with its ropes, to crush the cover crop:
Now smaller, lighter. -
if necessary I work the soil once in a while, so I have also a good rototiller.
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multiple containers for seeds and a set of 9 sieves + coffee filters and clothespins to dry fermented tomato seeds, eggplants seeds, physalis, etc… all the small wet seeds. Like can be seen here, from 4’20" on.
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have one “thing” like that, which has many names in France (Tarare, Ventadou…) :
to help cleaning big quantities of seeds, cereals, beans or whatever
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If you like not to waste too much time this is a great tool i found out only just now after ten years suffering in the garden. I’m offended by y’all keeping it secret.
It’s like a handheld scythe!
Here we got more curve one very traditional, used to cut grain grass.
