Basic Garden Equipment
There’s a bewildering array of tools available for you to buy both at your local garden centre and online. But what’s the minimum you need at home to keep your plants happy while not also breaking the bank? Here’s a useful guide to what you need when you start off.
| Equipment | Reasons | |
|---|---|---|
| Gloves | All-purpose gardening gloves are fine for everyday jobs but leather work best if you have to dig out brambles. Welder’s gloves are excellent for this but tend to come in very large sizes which is hopeless if you have small hands like me! | |
| Fork | A fork is really useful for removing weeds and clearing a plot ready for planting. I don’t like to disturb the ground too much, mainly because I’d be undoing all the great work that the worms, insects and various microbes have done to create the soil. | |
| Trowel | I use a trowel for nearly all my planting and only use a spade for trees or larger plants such as gooseberries or blackcurrants. | |
| Watering can | A large 10 litre can is a good buy – it’s large enough to only need a couple of cans to water all of your plot but it’s small enough to still be portable when full. | |
| Weeder | There are all manner of weird and wonderful tools to buy for weeding. There’s the classic hoe which you can use to uproot small weeds and keep your rows tidy. But there’s also a range of hand weeders which can be used for weeds with deeper roots such as dandelions, dock, teasel, thistle and horsetail. I bought a narrow garden trowel to use as a weeder and find it does an excellent job even if this wasn’t its original purpose! |
You may also check out this list of 10 essential gardening tools every new gardener needs.
