A nursery truck pulls up to your home, offloads a couple of trees, some dirt, two guys and four or five tools. You go into your garage or tool shed and look at the thirty or forty gardening tools you've got. Forty-five minutes later, they return and pickup the guys and the tools, your trees perfectly and professionally planted. What gardening tools were they using and just how did they do it so fast and so well?
This article is for the gardening tools required for planting a tree. The list is not long: you'll need a spade, shovel, hose and a rake. That's it. Well, not really. First the secret:
Landscaper Secret 3: Professionals use virtually the same tools as you, BUT they keep them clean, very sharp and well oiled.
The two other tools that you didn't notice them pitch off the truck were a file and some oil, like WD40. That shovel and spade have been ground down with a grinder similar to sharpening a knife. If you don't own a grinder, ask at your gardening supply store for a referral. If you live far enough out of town, the feed store will be the one who knows somebody.
The file they carry is for quickly restoring the edge to their tools. If they're good, they'll clean their tools before they leave your place and may oil them then. Or, if it's early in the day, they may wait until the day's work is done before the final sharpening and oiling.
Now, the tools:
- The Gardening Spade. That's the one with the long, narrow blade. You'll want to buy the heaviest one you can and sharpen it to a knife-edge. Don't worry, you won't be muscling it too much. You use gravity to help drop it into the ground and then stomp on the ledge to finish the stroke. For those of us with less muscle mass, a roofing spade is a nice alternative. The blade is a little wider and the handle a little shorter. But, sharpen that baby and it can be a spade for digging, an edger for small spaces or a tool to strip grass off an area in sheets to use elsewhere.
- The Gardening Shovel. There are two varieties here. Shovels are for shoveling, not digging. With a shovel, you remove the dirt you just loosened with the spade. A good edge on a shovel then is nice, but not necessary. Get a shovel you can handle. Some prefer a long-handled one. Others want to get closer to the work with a shorter D handled shovel. Both require decent positioning of your body if you don't want to kill your back. That's in the next article.
- The Garden Hose. Buy the best one you can that's as heavy as you can handle. The heavier ones usually last longer and don't curl up on you so much while you're working. You'll be using it in a specific manner to water in those trees. It's also good for sprinklers, hosing down filthy children and laying out flowerbeds.
- The Garden Rake. This rake should be a heavy duty one with tines like a comb, not a fan. You'll use it for leveling and spreading soil. First use will be with the tines down, combing the soil into fairly level condition. Then, flip it over, using the flat rod side to give it a final dressing.
That's really it, unless you need to track the soil and trees a distance through the garden. If it's a ways, you'll want a garden cart or wheelbarrow. A garden cart with the bicycle wheels holds a lot or weight and is easy on the back.
Spade, shovel, rake, hose and cart. These tools are multipurpose. Good ones, kept clean and sharp, will last decades under home landscaping use.
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