Here’s a list of useful gardening tools, especially for home and container gardening that will certainly make your life easier!
SELF WATERING NEEDLES: These inexpensive drip needles are quite simple but a powerful system for slow and self watering of potted plants. Just thread in any standard water bottle into this device – It easily fits most international standards bottles such as coca cola bottles, sprite bottles, pepsi bottles and so on. Cut the top of the bottle and insert this into the container close to the plant and fill it with water. Adjust the 360 degree drip flow knob to get desired flow of water or drops per minute depending on the watering requirement of you plant and there you have it. This is very useful especially if you are on a vacation for few days.
- ELECTRIC PRESSURE SPRAYER: Depending upon the size of your home garden, you can choose a hand held 2.5 litre rechargeable electric sprayer or a 10 litre knapsack electric sprayer that works on 12V DC and a rechargeable battery. Or if your garden is even larger, you can connect a 12V DC pump to a garden hose and use a multi-mode sprayer gun like this and use the misting mode to spray your pesticides and foliar feeds. Using manual sprayers is cumbersome and lacks that ideal pressure needed for spraying pesticides and also they are not durable.
- GARDENING GLOVES: Protection First! You can either purchase multiple pairs of inexpensive gloves like these or a pair of good quality gardening gloves with claws in right hand. These not only protect your hands from dirt, thorns and even harmful insects, but also replace trowels and hand rakes for digging, raking and planting.
- GRAFTING TOOL: Grafting is actually made so easy with this tool. A Neat and Sharp cut is essential for a successful grafting. This tool comes with U-cut and V-cut blades and a pruner or cutter at the tip. You can save a lot of time and increase the success rates of your grafting. Just punch the tool on the root stock first and then on the scion branch and this fits in so perfectly and healing happens much faster than compared with manual methods like using a grafting knife and stuff like that.
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- WATERING CANS: Depending on the size of your garden, you can choose either small watering cans like these ranging from 2 litres to 5 litres – plastic or metallic cans. Fancy Metallic cans like this will have an advantage of no leaks from the nozzle sides while watering unlike the plastic cans which leak from joints while watering. This is a must have tool even if you have a garden hose, specially for watering seeds and seedlings with the fine showering action.
- WATERING HOSE: Invest on a good quality flexible rubber watering hose pipe to avoid those irritating kinks from a poor quality hose and have a peace of mind while watering your plants. This great quality hose comes in half an inch or Three-fourth inch calibre to opt, depending on the pressure of your home water supply or the floor you live in. It also comes with an optional retractable reel if you want more peace of mind.
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- FALCON EASY PLANTER: This is a very handy tool for digging holes at 5cm and 10cm and very useful for transplanting and planting bulbs, root balls and plants. Simply place this planter tool on the soil, twist and push down to create your hole and then lift out. Drop your bulb or the plant into the hole and by the press of a button, the soil is then released automatically. It’s that easy! You can also use this to transplant small plants and seedlings quickly and efficiently.
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- Heavy Duty Garden Spade or Shovel: This is the classical Indian spade. This is very important if you are preparing your own DIY potting mix to thoroughly mix all ingredients in proper proportions.
- 3-in-1 SOIL PH METER: This is a great inexpensive must have gadget to check three things in your garden. Most importantly to test your Soil PH which is one of the most important factor for nutrient absorption by the roots. This also tests your soil moisture level to avoid over watering or under watering your plants. Plus it has a light meter to check the light levels for your plants.
PURCHASE LINKS - A SMALL CROWBAR OR WRECKING BAR: This is particularly useful for ground gardening like for digging pits, removing obstacles and similar stuff.
- TWIST TIE: This is another must have stuff specially for tying your plants to supports. Twist on, twist off and Reuse the same year after year!
- SOIL SCOOPS: This is so handy – like if you do not wish to get your hands into the dirt. What you see here is just a steel rice scoop and serves the purpose of a soil scoop while repotting plants.
- Garden Trowel: This tool is a miniature version of a garden spade. It is used for mixing soil, digging a hole, transplanting seedlings, levelling out soil and even dividing tubers. It can also be used for scooping out compost or potting mix from the bag specially while repotting your plants.
- Garden Rake, Fork, Cultivator and Weed Removal Tool: At home gardening level, all these are smaller tools that serve the purpose of raking or making your top soil loose for preparing or aerating the soil before planting seeds or seedlings and also before or after applying fertilizers. The deweeder tool is handy in removing small weeds from root level.
- PRUNERS AND CUTTERS: There are various types of pruners and cutting tools in gardening ranging from floral snips to hand pruner, pole pruner, garden saw, hedge shears to a simple tool like a scissor. Depending on the type and the load of gardening, you can choose a particular type of cutting. Please watch a detailed video explaining various types of Pruners.
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Pruners also called as Pruning shears or hand pruners or secateurs and even garden scissors, are a type of cutting tools for use on plants and gardening.
Pruning is one of the most important and useful practice in gardening that needs to be performed irrespective of the type of plant you are growing in your garden. Whether ornamental plants or flowering or fruiting plants, these cutting or pruning practices are indispensable for your plant health and you should never avoid pruning on emotional grounds. You all must be aware of the benefits of pruning – whether to get rid of diseased branches or to promote branching and plant growth or even improving flowering and fruiting. We will not go into details of the benefits of pruning right now. But in this video we will learn about the different types of pruners or cutting tools we use in home gardening.
There are many gardeners and beginners who are not aware of the correct type of pruners they require. It is important to note that using the wrong pruners might adversely affect your plants instead of improving it.
So, now lets look at the different types of Pruners:
- Hand Pruners or Hand Shears: These are the most commonly used cutters in home gardening. These are of two types:
- Anvil pruners
- Bypass Pruners
Anvil pruners have a straight upper blade that cuts against a flat lower plate – that looks like an anvil. ANVIL means a heavy iron block on which hot metals are beaten into shape.
Well, These Anvil pruners tend to crush the stem as they cut, and are best for woody branches that won’t be harmed by crushing. So remember to use them only on woody or semiwoody branches and not soft branches that can be crushed.
Bypass pruners have curved scissor-like blades that overlap. These are ideal for cutting younger and soft branches. These are the commonly used pruners in home gardening. Also they are best for making stem cuttings at 45 degree cutting angle for propagation of plants from stem cuttings.
- Lopping Pruners or lopping shears: These are similar to the hand pruners but have long handles that provide a little more reach than hand shears and are they are suitable for heavy duty pruning for upto three-fourth to 1 inch diameter cuttings. Again similarly these are of two types – Anvil and Bypass type.
- Pole Pruners: Pole pruners are made of blades attached to hooks. These hooks are mounted on long poles and a chain or cord controls the blade, which is usually spring-loaded. Pole pruners can typically reach branches that are 12 feet or more above the ground. These are typically used when the use of ladder is not possible.
- Hedge Pruners or Hedge Shears: These are designed for rapid trimming of hedges. Hedge means a boundary or fence formed by closely growing bushes or shrubs or even grass. The hedge shears come in a variety of sizes and designs. They have long, straight or angled blades that are sharp enough to cut several branches at once shot. The longer blades of hedge shears ensure an even cut across the plant branches to maintain a neat and balanced border. You can also use them to make a neat border of many other plants as well like bougainvillea bush and stuff like that.
- Pruning Saw: Even these come in variety of sizes and blades with teeth that are fine or coarse. and even a folding type like this one is available. This looks pretty handy and sturdy for home gardening purpose. These are typically used for Stems that are more than 1-1/2 inches in diameter which are usually too large for hand pruners or lopping shears. You can find the links to purchase these items from my website www.gkvk.in
- Flower Cutter. This is a simple bypass pruner to cut small branches or flowers. These are light weight and have a spring system. And they are Best for performing dead heading. Am sure you all must be aware of what is dead heading and its benefits. You can watch this video on what is dead heading from HERE.
- Last but not the least – A simple Scissor does a lot of job. Am sure all of you agree with this. This is quite handy and most useful tool in gardening.
The Garden Tools are used in home gardening and overlaps with the range of tools made for agriculture and horticulture. Garden tools discussed here are only hand tools and not power tools.
Tools Discussed are:
The Garden Trowel
Khurpa / Khurpi
Cultivator / Hand-Rake
Garden Fork
Hand Weeder:
Garden Cutter and Pruner
Water Sprayer.
Water Sprinkler or Shower can.
Spray Gun.
Rubber Hand Gloves.
Wrecking Bar for digging.
Types of Pruners.