Starting a home garden can be as fun as it is rewarding. But even the most amateur gardener will quickly realize that it takes more than seeds and sunlight to create that dream lawn. Learning your way around the gardening tool aisle can be an intimidating prospect. This article will walk you through some of the basics of buying your first tools.
First of all, don’t get carried away. There are a lot of tools that you don’t need – at least not right away. As a beginner building your collection, you’ll do best to stick to the basics. A shovel and a spade are invaluable. A shovel is round-ended, good for large digging projects, and a spade is the shovel’s square-headed cousin, useful for edging beds and moving and removing sod and soil. When purchasing these, look for steel heads and strong handles of wood or fiberglass. These tools are also worth some investment, as you will use them often and they will last a long time.
A spading fork, or digging fork, is used to open up the soil before you plant, so it clearly needs to be one of your first purchases. Caution here, though – spading forks are not pitchforks, so don’t buy a pitchfork and think you’re all set. A spading fork has a shorter handle and four square tines that are wider than a pitchfork’s and enable it to take on more heavy-duty digging and turning. Your well-purchased spading fork will be indispensable to you once your garden gets going. Read the rest of this entry »