Gardening equipment

Click here to see our selection of Gardening equipment.

Some kinds of gardening equipment are highly specialized, others are more standard and very useful, and others are nice but not necessary. The gardening equipment you need varies depending on the size of your garden, your gardening ability, and whether you can take your time or want to get the job done in a hurry.

· The minimum equipment you will need as a gardener includes:

A shovel or spade

a hoe

a rake

a trowel

There are many more types of gardening equipment, and each of these tools has a wide selection of styles available depending on your personal preference and price range. The following are some examples.

· Tools for cultivating

Hand Tools

o Garden shovels with pointed blades are lighter and smaller than other shovels.

o A spade has a flat blade for cutting rather than lifting or moving soil. A spade is excellent for shaping straight-sided trench or for edging your beds.

o A long handed shovel is used for general-purposes like digging, lifting, and moving.

Shovels and spades both come with long or short handles. A long handle offers greater leverage and are less tiring to use, and a short handle is often thicker and stronger than a long handle.

o A spading fork is another useful digging tool. A spading fork is a simple piece of gardening equipment ideal for several things such as breaking and turning heavy soils and for loosening layers of soil when double digging a bed. You can use a spading fork for turning coarse compost, spreading mulches, digging root crops and more.

o A hoe is essential in any garden for preparing the seed bed, removing weeds, and breaking up encrusted soil. There are several different kinds of hoes, perhaps the most commonly used hoe is the square-bladed hoe, which is helpful for many garden tasks.

o A sturdy rake is useful in clearing the garden of rocks and debris, spreading mulches, smoothing seedbeds and more. When choosing a rake avoid choosing one that is too heavy. If you have a very heavy rake it will tire you after a short period of use. You also want to make sure your rake is the right height for you.

o A trowel is another piece of gardening equipment that tends to remain in constant use for those many digging jobs that need not be done with full-sized tools. The trowel is perfect for transplanting seedlings and bulbs or digging shallow-rooted weeds.

o Small hand cultivators, often sold in sets with trowels, are good for weeding in small areas and between closely spaced plants.

o A digger (otherwise known as a weeder or cultivator) is useful for digging up weeds with long taproots, such as dandelions or Queen Anne's lace, or for prying out Johnson grass rhizomes. The digger tool is practically indestructible and well worth the small investment of its price.

o There are other types of hand gardening equipment such as the pickax, mattock, and wheel cultivators etc.

Power Tools

Power tools are very popular for use as gardening equipment.

o The power rotary tiller is the power tool most often purchased as gardening equipment. Whether or not a gardener needs a rotary tiller depends on the size of the garden, the gardener's capabilities, and the intended uses of the tiller. Many people hire professional tillers. The purchase of a tiller is a major investment.

o Power tools are less frequently used as gardening equipment, but there are various cordless tools with cultivating attachments. Most of which are rechargeable and can make your gardening chores more pleasurable.

o A garden shredder may be useful for a large garden with a lot of plant wastes. There are hand-operated shredders that are slow but useful if wastes become available in small quantities and are not too coarse. Gasoline shredders are quite expensive and may be disappointing to the gardener who wants to chip branches and other large materials. They are best used for shredding leaves, small branches, and other plant wastes (though sunflower stalks would probably be too much for one). They are also noisy and give off air pollutants. A chipper, on the other hand, will chip large branches and other coarse material, but the cost of $1000 or more makes the chipper uneconomical for the home gardener. Wear ear protection when using power tools.

Pruning Tools

o Pruning shears are good gardening equipment for cutting branches up to 3/4 -inch in diameter. A pair of pruning shears has one of two blade or cut styles: scissor action or bypass blades and anvil cut.

o Gardening equipment for pruning such as lopping shears. Lopping shears are shears with long handles and should be operated with both hands. Even the cheapest lopping shears can cut 1/2 -inch diameter material.

o Pole pruners are types of pruning equipment that have cutters designed with a hooked blade above and a cutting blade beneath. The cutter is on a pole and is operated by a cord or chain pulled downward. These pieces of gardening equipment can be used to reach branches 12 feet or more above the ground.

o Hedge shears: The most common hedge sheers for home use are electric models. Hedge shears have long, flat blades and relatively short handles, one for each hand. Although this kind of gardening equipment is very efficient for shearing, the use of hedge shears will often result in ragged cuts if you do not keep the blades sharp.

o Pruning saws are other gardening equipment used for home projects. A fixed-blade saw with a protective scabbard is safer and easier to use, whereas folding saws are gardening equipment that often require either a screwdriver or will have a protruding wing nut, which can scar the trunk of the tree when a limb is cut.

Carts/Wheelbarrows

o A wheelbarrow or cart is very handy to have in and around the garden area. Select one that is easy to handle when full, with good maneuverability. Durable construction is well worth paying for to ensure a long, useful life.

Pest Control Equipment

o Unfortunately there is a need for some sort of pest control gardening equipment in most gardens. Even organic gardeners often need sprayers for dormant oils or dusters for botanical insecticides.

Watering Equipment

o The purchase of watering equipment depends on available facilities, water supply, climate, and garden practices.

Soil monitoring gardening equipment:

o Soil test kits can be purchased in various sizes and levels of sophistication. These are handy, but not always necessary; soil testing does not have to be done more frequently than once a year for most gardening purposes.

o If inexpensive garden soil tests are offered it is often preferable to have them do the tests, as results are likely to be more accurate. Some gardeners like to monitor the soil quality frequently, though, making a soil test kit a worthwhile purchase. An electronic pH tester is on the market for those who like gadgets.

o Soil thermometer: The soil temperature is critical for many crops of foods and vegetables. Soil thermometers are the gardening equipment that measures the soil temperature and the internal temperature of a compost pile.

Other environmental monitoring equipment: Serious gardeners often invest in various types of gardening equipment that allow them to monitor the microclimate around the garden or indoors.

o A rain gauge is an inexpensive device that helps the gardener determine if enough rain has fallen for garden plants.

o A minimum-maximum thermometer is a costly, but often useful, gardening equipment device for measuring nightly lows and daytime highs within an area; these are especially valuable in a greenhouse.

o Light and watering meters can be purchased for indoor plant monitoring.

Seeding and planting tools:

o Row seeders:
Depending on the size of your garden and your physical abilities, you may want to consider a row seeder, however this particular piece of gardening equipment typically does not perform quite as well on small-seeded crops, and it is not really worth the effort of setting up a seeder for small areas.

o Handheld seeder:
A hand-held seeder is probably a better of gardening equipment for seeding a smaller garden.

Trellises/Cages:

o Trellises and cages for vining plants save space and keep fruits off the ground, reducing the amount of stooping required for harvest and damage to plants. Not to mention that they often look beautiful in the garden as well.

Composting equipment:

o Whichever type of compost maker you use, it's a good idea to make use of the nutrients that leach out from under the pile. This is easily done by locating the composter in the garden (which also reduces hauling time), or under a large fruit tree, or by making some provision to catch the runoff from the pile and use it as liquid fertilizer.

Season extenders:

o Your annual harvest can be greatly increased by extending the growing season, starting earlier in the spring and harvesting past frost.

Among with all the other gardening equipment we have mentioned, there are many other specific types of harvesting equipment etc. When you love gardening, you need to know what gardening equipment will work the best for you and your garden.

We accept all major credit cards