Treasures

In The Tool Shed

By Nancy K. Crevier

From shovels to scooters, gardeners can find nearly any tool to fit the need. Hoes and spades of all shapes and sizes work the soil. Garden kneelers, perennial planters, soil scoops, and specialty shovels take the pain out of planting. Put the bow rake or the weed weasel to work, and weeds are gone in short order. Folding saws, pruners, and shears tidy up unruly shrubs, and every gardener depends on some kind of extension of the arm to maximize gardening efficiency.

Ergonomically designed tools are relative newcomers to the market. These gardening tools are designed to maximize leverage, thereby reducing the effort needed to complete a task. Special handles and cushioned grips reduce strain, while snug, padded gloves allow for maximum dexterity and reduce hand fatigue.

Women gardeners often find that mainstream tools are a bit unwieldy, and the market has responded to those concerns by introducing lines of tools made especially for the smaller hand span of most female gardeners. These tools also take into account women’s build and strengths, using materials that provide a strong but lightweight piece of equipment.

No matter how many new items come onto the market, though, or how clever and practical a new tool may be, longtime gardeners find that they often fall back to one or two favorites in the tool shed.

Town & Country Garden Club member Emi Lydem loves her three-pronged weeder.

“I mostly use my handheld weeder,” she said. “In the spring, I use the longer handled three-pronged weeder, before things get up and going. I really use it for just about everything,” Ms Lydem said. As the season progresses, she finds that her clippers are her next best friend.

“My dibble is my favorite garden tool,” said Beth Caldwell, president of The Garden Club of Newtown. “It’s like a giant screwdriver that pierces the ground, so you can easily plant a bulb or a small plant. I also have a handheld spade with a curved, anvil-shaped blade. I use that mostly for loosening soil to put in new plants.”

Linda Manna, of Newtown Country Mill, has extensive home gardens that she loves to tend.

“A tool I picked up a couple of years ago is my favorite. I’m not sure of the name. It is from the Martha Stewart collection, and the head has three prongs on one side and a spade on the other. It’s great if you have viney weeds that need to be dug out. It grabs hold really well, and pulls them up and out. Then you just flip it over and it’s ready to dig. It’s like having a set of two tools, in one,” said Ms Manna.

Like mother, like son: Robert Manna is owner of LRM Landscape Contractors in Newtown, so he also spends a great deal of time with plants and gardening tools.

“My favorite tool would be my excavator,” joked Mr Manna, “however, not every homeowner owns one.” For a hand tool, he goes to the traditional spade shovel, he said, that will “aid in accomplishing 80 percent of all the work related to planting.” For instance, a spade shovel can dig new holes, dig out shrubs for transplanting, grade, and even move mulch, Mr Manna said. “Second to the spade shovel, a bow rake would be my next most-used hand tool,” he added.

“My ‘go-to’ tool is my Felco pruner,” said Hollandia Gift & Garden Center owner Sally Reelick. “It is just the best. It is more expensive than other pruners, but it is phenomenal for pruning, clipping, or whatever,” she said. Her second “go-to” tool, she said, would have to be the staff at either of the Hollandia sites in Bethel, “for their depth of knowledge.”

“I have several I really like,” said Hawley School administrative staff member Terry Merola, who spends much of her free time caring for her gardens and yard. “One [of my favorite garden tools] is my kneeler that I use for almost every ground level task; and I have a little foldable saw that comes in extremely handy for pruning work,” she said.

Henry Hull is the president of The Horticulture Society of Newtown. He struggled to answer, noting that each garden tool has its specific use.

“At the time I am using a tool,” said Mr Hull, “it is my favorite, because it is doing a job that I need to complete.” That said, Mr Hull confessed that he does favor his spade over many tools. “It has so many uses in the garden, including planting small plants, such as annuals. My other favorite is the small shovel. Its many uses in the garden include planting shrubs and perennials,” he said.

Jim Shortt of Shortt’s Farm & Garden in Sandy Hook works two large garden areas, one at the main garden center off of Riverside Road, and another four acres off of Cherry Street.

“For in the field, my favorite is the hoe. I use it more than anything else,” he said. Whether it is a stirrup hoe or a classic arrowhead hoe, or a swan neck hoe, Mr Shortt finds that tool hard to beat. “It comes in pretty handy,” said Mr Shortt, “and you can use whichever one fits the need.”

Dr Jeff Metzger’s favorite tool comes with a little bit of history.

“It’s called a mattock, and it’s like a pick on one end of the head, and has a broad end on the other side of the head, about four inches wide,” he said. “I borrowed a mattock from my neighbor a number of years ago. The next spring, he asked for it back, but I had returned it months before — I thought,” recalled Dr Metzger. Much to his embarrassment, a few weeks later his then-4-year-old daughter came trudging out of the woods behind their house, dragging the very rusted mattock behind her. “I bought my neighbor a new one, and this one has been working fine ever since,” laughed Dr Metzger.

The mattock is indispensable, said the avid gardener, for digging up shrubs, transplanting, and tearing up grass to make way for new gardens.

“We’re always enlarging our garden area it seems,” he said. Most recently, he and his wife Nancy found the mattock most handy for digging out one large shrub to make way for Nancy’s anniversary present to her husband, a redbud tree.

“We took out the shrub, dug a hole across the road for that, and dug a new hole for the tree. The mattock can do what a regular shovel or pick can’t do,” said Dr Metzger.

If the tool fits, use it, agreed these gardeners, and add even more pleasure to a pleasurable experience.