Gardening hand tools
for profitable gardening

There are some basic gardening hand tools that are essential, if you are looking to do some profitable gardening in your retirement.

It is worth investing in good quality equipment, that will last, and not need replacing due to breakages. However, it is easy to get overwhelmed when visiting a garden centre and you could end up spending more than you need to.

So I spoke to Debbie, a lady who runs a successful garden maintenance business, to get her tips on what is necessary, and what is nice to have. Of course the equipment you will need depends on what type of jobs you are prepared to tackle. Debbie will undertake most jobs, but now she is getting older, she draws the line at trimming large hedges or working with trees.

She finds that most clients will have their own larger tools and equipment such as lawn mowers and wheelbarrows, and are happy for her to use them when working in their gardens. She does like to have her own tools at hand, however, in case her clients do not posses any gardening hand tools.

Garden Spade and Fork

For general digging jobs, loosening soil, adding compost or manure to a flower bed and even digging up potatoes you will need a garden spade and border fork.

As you may find yourself using these for long periods they need to be light-weight and have a comfortable handle. Most people will probably find that the D handle suits them better than the T shaped one.

You will probably be faced with a choice of blade width and depth when buying your spade.

The smaller ones are normally 6 inches wide by 10 inches deep. They may be advertised as a women's tool but don't be too worried about that. A big heavy spade is useful when working on your own vegetable plot, but it can soon become tiring lifting both the spade, and the earth you are moving, each time.

Garden Shears and Secateurs

If you don't feel happy using a pruning knife you may prefer to keep a good, sharp pair of secateurs amongst your gardening hand tools.

Here you can choose from parrot billed (which have a scissors action) or anvil (where there is only one blade which cuts when it moves against a metal block).

These will be useful for most pruning jobs, such as roses, or shrubs. For thicker, woodier stems you may need some two handled garden shears or loppers.

Leaf and Garden Rakes

There are various types of garden rake on the market, each designed for a different job.

You will find a standard rake useful for breaking down clods of earth before sowing seeds, and for covering them with soil once they are in the ground.

These come with various widths of head, normally between 12 to 16 inches. Do, of course, be very careful not to leave these lying around with the tines facing upwards! It is too easy to step on the rake head, and have the handle spring up and hit you painfully.

A leaf rake with wider tines will also be valuable for numerous jobs, including, of course, clearing the leaves off the lawn in the fall.

Hand fork and Trowel

A hand fork and trowel and indispensable for the jobbing gardener. A long thin bladed hand fork is great for prizing out long rooted weeds.

The trowel comes into its own when planting out seedlings or bedding plants or when filling flower pots with compost.

Other useful gardening hand tools

Additional items you may like to have on hand include...

• Onion hoe - a short handled hoe for weeding in between plants
• Dutch hoe - for weeding in between rows of plants
• Dibber (make your own from an old fork handle) for planting small seedlings
• Plastic or galvanized watering can
• Folding wheelbarrow
• Garden claw - long handled tool designed to make digging easier
• Edging clippers - to keep the edges of lawns tidy
• Garden tool sharpener
• 2 trugs - for keeping your smaller tools together

Garden tool holder

In the list of additional gardening hand tools above, I mentioned trugs. The traditional trug was a wooden basket, often made by the gardener himself. They had numerous uses, perhaps the most well known of which was collecting the vegetables and fruit from the garden to take to the kitchen.

Nowadays, we tend to use rubberized plastic containers with two handles, which are sold in garden centers, or more economically, in builders merchants.

Debbie advises us to stick to the smaller trugs, as once full of tools or produce, the larger ones can become really heavy. She has two of these. One to keep her tools together and the second for either throwing weeds into (plastic bags tend to collapse), or filled with water for washing pots, or standing potted plants in to give them a drink.

Take security measures

Once you have all the necessary tools, make sure you look after them, and store them securely in a lockable garden shed.

While at a client's property you can leave the hand gardening tools you are not currently using in the back of your vehicle, but you may want to keep the keys on your person rather than in the ignition.

I was once very lucky not to be badly injured when a thief stole a local gardener's car and trailer, and drove off at breakneck speed, with the trailer zig zagging across the road out of control!