Planting and Gardening Tools

• The proper tools make gardening easy and enjoyable.Jupiterimages/Comstock/Getty Images
  
  A key to successful gardening is having the proper tools to create and maintain beautiful garden spaces. Good tools make it easier to cultivate the soil for planting, add soil amendments, keep down weeds, provide adequate moisture, haul gardening materials and create new garden beds.
  
  

Cultivating

• A D-handled spade has a flat, narrow blade with squared edges that cuts through soil easily. It is good for digging in established beds, where space is tight and other plants might be damaged. The handle offers better leverage than a long-handled shovel. The flat, thin, rectangular blade slices through soil easily, allowing you to dig at a uniform depth. It also comes in handy for straight edging work, letting you create allowing neat, straight-edged corners and divide perennial clumps.
  
  A gardening shovel is otherwise the most used tool for cultivation and digging. Its pointed blade is made to be pushed down with your foot to cut into the soil and the long handle provides some leverage to loosen and move it.
  
  The D-handle spading fork has a forged head with four thin, rounded tines. It loosens soil, cultivating and aerating, turning in soil amendments, lifting and moving refuse from wheelbarrow and digging potatoes.
  
  A cultivating fork chops breaks up compacted soil. It can also chop tough weeds out. Use a cultivating fork first on beds that require an initial breakup of the top soil to make deeper cultivation easier. It may also chop and mix manure into the bed.
  
  

Maintenance

• Wheelbarrows carry garden refuse, haul compost or other soil amendments for garden bed preparation, gather up the harvest and move construction materials for building new garden features.
  
  The level head rake is a finishing tool. It smoothes the surface and breaks up remaining clumps of soil. Its level head does not flex like a bow rake when breaking soil clumps with the tines and the straight back smoothes soil surfaces.
  
  

Hand Tools

• The curved, pointed blade of the hand trowel is ideal for digging in tight spaces and making small holes, as well as bulb planting or indoor gardening use.
  
  A hand fork has three pointed tines that curve into a claw shape for breaking clumps of soil in tight areas. The dandelion digger has a narrow, forked blade used for digging dandelions and other plants with deep roots.
  
  Pruning shears look like curved scissors. The curved blade is useful for taking cuttings and pruning bushes or perennials. Invest in the best quality pruners you can afford, because you need good pruners to make clean cuts.
  
  

Other Equipment

• A good garden hose is a must for all gardens The better the hose, the less likely it is to kink, an irritating fact of the gardening life; rubber hoses generally kink less than other types. All plants need reliable irrigation to grow and flourish. The garden hose should be a length that reaches the whole garden from the spigot. An adjustable nozzle for your garden hose controls the water flow.
  
  A good pair of gardening gloves keeps your hands clean, protects them from punctures and help prevent splinters and blisters, allowing for painless weed removal.