If you haven’t been using the proper garden tools, you could be costing yourself up to 50 percent more time working in the garden. Garden tools should be in good working condition and should be well taken care of. Rusty spades, shovels, pruning tools, and shears should not be discarded. The rust can damage the plants and the oxidised metal may contaminate the soil as well. Rust will stay in the soil for years and poison the plants through their roots, so you really want to avoid using rusty tools. Stainless steel tools won’t rust, but they are more expensive. So if you are a beginner gardener, you may not want to spend that much.
You should have a safe, covered place to store your tools when you are not using them. Even leaving the garden hose out in the sun can wind up damaging your plants. It’s not ideal if you turn the faucet and scalding water douses the leaves and flowers.
You should also make sure that your tools are made of good quality steel. If it says “tempered”, “heat-tempered”, “forged”, or “drop-forged” then you can feel confident that you have a sturdy tool.
Basic gardening tools that you should have include a trowel, spade, digging fork, and bulb planter. A trowel is perfect for digging small holes and for lifting plants out of the ground or pot to transplant to a new location. A spade is great if you need a larger hole. A spade can make a tidy hole that has straight sides. A digging fork is useful for digging up large clumps of weeds or perennials that you’re going to separate and transplant. A bulb planter is perfect if you want to plant bulbs because it makes the holes the proper size to drop the bulb in.
