Gardening tools come in wide variety of types, sizes and prices. It stands to reason that if your gardening is to be a pleasant exercise, or a just a hard-to-do chore, it all will largely depend on the choice and type and quality of the tools you have at hand. The usual types of gardening tools you need usually fall into a few categories or groups.
- Soil work tools
- Tools for lawn-care
- Pruning tools
- Specialty tools
When considering the tools for your gardening work, a few things to bear in mind are the particular needs and the quality. If you don’t think you will need the tool, don’t buy it. It doesn’t make sense to a whole bunch of tools and then leave them in the shed. On the other hand, should you go shopping for a gardening tool, try and get something of quality because quality tools are meant to last a long while. Buy once and forget – that is the motto. Your focus should be on the plants and the end results, not on the tools.
Soil work tools are usually related to tools that you need to dig into the soil, to till the soil, and to break up hard pan or clayey layers in the soil. The most basic tool for this purpose is the humble garden spade. For more heavy duty work though, a spade is inadequate due to its small size. Hence, you need shovels, which are just larger versions of spades. Trowels are related, and usually have a curved scoop to enable easy scooping up of earth and small plants. Meanwhile, a hoe is just a much more powerful version of a shovel, and can easily break up compacted hard soil and quickly dig up a trench, if that is what you want to accomplish.
Lawn care tools most often imply tools that allow you to cut the grass quickly and easily. This is where lawn mowers come in. There are several types of lawn mowers these days, such as high end robotic lawn mowers, and even small tractor-lawn mowers for working on large lawns; however, most people will still be using either the rotary or gas-powered lawn mowers (which are noisy), or the simple and cheap reel lawn mower, which will need to be pushed along manually. Finally, you need rakes and brooms to sweep up dead leaves and keep your lawn or garden tidy.
Pruning tools are simply tools that you use to cut plants, usually any other plants besides grass. These are usually scissor-like in nature, allowing you to trim off any parts of plants that have grown too large or untidy. These pruning tools range from small secateurs to larger shears and even pruning saws. You might wonder why you would need a saw in the garden, but these pruning saws are used to cut off branches and the small trunks of juvenile trees.
Specialty tools are those in gardening niches which do not belong in the popular main ones. An example might be specialized bonsai tools, like cutters and pliers, etc. Or if you keep a koi pond, or grow plants via hydroponics or aquaponics – you will surely need specialized tools that only work in these specific gardening niches.
