Tools

• Keeps hands soft and prevent blisters on your hands when doing heavy work
• An inexpensive option, especially if working in wet soil, is a pair of kitchen rubber gloves

Gardening Gloves

Gardening Shears

• Pruning and cutting flowers

Wheelbarrow

• Easy to move and big enough to carry items around the garden
• Hauling compost, amendments and manure to and from the garden site
• Transporting harvested vegetables, hanging garlic or onions over the sides to easily move them in and out of the sun

• Digging a hole when setting out transplants or when planting bulbs like garlic or seed potatoes
• Measuring stick for often having markings to measure the correct depth when planting seeds, bulbs, or seed potatoes

Hoe

• Keeps the garden free of weeds by digging and chopping
• Used to mark rows when plating seeds or transplants

Rake

• Prepping and cleaning garden bed
• Collecting organic matter like garden debris and leaves that are found around the yard

Hand Trowel

Tools

Vegetable Gardening basic tasks start in the spring with digging the garden beds, getting them ready for planting, moving amendments and debris to and from the garden site, and then planting the seeds and transplants, watering, harvesting, making compost, and keeping track of of all tasks.

Garden Fork

Garden Journal

On the Farm:

Q: How do you maintain your crops?

A: "After winter leaves, the soil dries up. You have to turn the soil with the rototiller then let the sun warm up the soil. Then you have to water and weed the crops."

Q: Do you have any help?

A: "No help."

• The importance of jotting down where you planted certain things, how they grew, and what worked or did not work is invaluable for planting and troubleshooting next season

• Digging "Spading" Fork: turning over soil, mixing in soil amendments, lifting and breaking up clumps of soil, and for harvesting root crops.
• Compost "Pitchfork" Fork: ideal for turning and moving compost, mulches, straw, green manures, and other organic material in or around garden beds

Shovel

• Digging, tilling, and amending garden beds
• Round-edged: scooping and lifting soil for turning garden beds and adding in organic amendments (compost or aged animal manure)
• Flat-edged (rectangular blade): cutting edges, removing or turning sod, digging holes, and for prying up rocks; prepping new garden bed

Sharp Knife

Garden Hose

Electronic Soil Tester

• Opening fertilizer bags
• Cutting vegetables when they are ready to be harvested
• Removal of stems from plants for composting
• Cutting off diseased or pest-infected plants (be sure to disinfect knife afterward)
• Slicing into a tomato or cucumber to eat it!
• A good quality knife is one of the handiest tools to carry in the garden

• Helpful garden tool to find out how well your soil supports

• Allow the waters source to reach all corners of the garden
• The bigger the hose diameter, the faster the water will come through, depending on the water pressure
• Water wand or nozzle at the end of the hose allows the water to reach the base of the plant more easily. Certain spray functions allow for plants to be watered in differently