Useful Small Garden Tools

Small garden tools come in many forms, and most of them serve different purposes. A good garden tool kit will have a useful selection, or you can buy them individually to meet your specific needs.

Garden trowels are among the most-used types of hand-held gardening tools. These are good for digging small holes, extracting well-rooted weeds, or digging shallow trenches. The point of most of this digging is to plant annuals. The relatively short rootball fits nicely in the holes you can dig with a garden trowel. For planting a lot of annuals, digging a shallow trench with the trowel makes the job go a lot faster than it would if you made individual holes.

A hand cultivator makes it easy to get rid of weed seedlings which are sprouting, as you aerate the earth around your garden plants. If you go out and cultivate during the blasting heat of the early afternoon, all it takes to get rid of the weed seedlings is to make sure to leave their roots exposed after you unearth them. The sun will dry up the weeds’ tender roots, killing them, and you won’t even have to pick them out of the soil. If the weeds are more robust, however, you will need to fully remove them from the soil after you cultivate, so they can’t re-root and keep growing.

A little hand-held spade is a good item for digging holes when planting vegetables or other plants which have a 3”-4” pot. With more digging power than a garden trowel, the small spade is still maneuverable enough to use it around other plantings. Sometimes, it’s hard to find this size of a spade in regular garden tool kits or the standard sections of a garden center. The solution? Buy a kid’s garden tool set. The children’s tools are usually only strong enough for digging in already-cultivated soil, but they include sizes of implements which are hard to find in “adult” versions.

A short-handled weeder can be a good thing to have if your garden tends to get infested with deep-rooted weeds. With these tools and a bit of skill, you can get far down into the earth, and then pry up the weed rather than just taking the top off.

With a good set of small garden tools, you can work around your plants easily and accomplish everything you need to do without hassle.