My Top Five Garden Tools

I know it probably seems strange to start a list of my top five tools with a statement that you don't need any of them, but it is true. I was reading the wonderful book Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden the other day and was amazed at how productive and resourceful the Native American people who gardened were. If you are gardening because you need to feed your family and don't have grocery money, look for this book in Google books, read it carefully and then hop on Freecycle to ask for a used hoe and some leftover seeds. If your soil is bad, hop online and ask for some well rotted manure or check to see if your local waste facility offers free AGED compost to improve your soil with. For free advice, call your county extension office and talk with someone about getting started.

Now, if you do have some money and want some nice gizmos and gadgets, go for it. Tools can make your life easier and can be fun to fiddle around with. They might make your garden more productive. They might just save you some back strain. They might just seem cool. So, on with my picks for the top five garden tools:

 What movie was that in? Was it Jim Carrey who did that impression? Well, I'm not talking about an ominous character with a scary hand. The Garden Claw is a tool that really saves your back when you're trying to get tough weeds out or break up a small area of soil without dragging out a tiller. I love that it doesn't need any gas or electricity to work - just good old fashioned human power. My tiller languishes in the shed and I doubt I'll pull it out again unless I move to a place where there's only lawn and I can't wait a year for a nice lasagna gardening sandwich to take care of the grass.

I don't necessarily need my Earthbox or my homemade bucket and container variations of this cool gardening tool. I have a yard and could garden in it. I do garden in it. But I like that I can stick a little garden on the patio right outside the door with a few patio tomato plants, herbs and pepers in it by simply setting up a container garden. If you don't have garden space, check out the EarthBox or try some of the DIY ideas for making something similar yourself. These systems are literally made for you.

 This is my first year using this system, but if you could see the difference between tomatoes in buckets growing in the soilless potting mix and getting optimum moisture compared to the ones in the garden...No, I'm not going out in the middle of the night to photograph them for you. You'll just have to take my word for it. (And, yes, I know it is really too early to have tomatoes growing outside, but I started my seeds too soon. I have to run around like mad and cover everything up if there's even a hint of frost in the evenings with juice bottle cloches and plastic.)

 You know those five dollar shovels you see every spring? You know that saying, "You get what you pay for?" It isn't always true, but in this case, it is. Get a good shovel and care for it properly and it will literally last you a lifetime. I have my grandparents' garden shovel. My brother had to make me a new handle for it the other year, but it is still digging like it just came home from the garden center.

There are many different types of shovels. I'm short, so I prefer ones with a shorter handle and a nice solid base. Some people like long handles. Some like the narrow spade types. As long as you are looking at a quality shovel, the rest is up to you;.

 There's no nice way to put this. I have water barrel envy. Ooohh. That one has an overflow thingy built in. Wow. Did you see the way that one just snuggled up to the wall with its flat side? Look at that built in mosquito stopper. I'm in love.

However, I have an excess of nice clean heavy duty trash cans. So, I might drool over water barrels, but I flip off the trash can lids when it rains and put them back on when it stops. I adjust them to catch that drip on the porch edge that the gutter guy couldn't stop and dump a capful of vegetable oil in them if I see any mosquito larvae. I scoop water out one boring watering can at a time instead of turning a little faucet handle at the bottom of a fancy barrel to get some water for my plants. It works perfectly. I still drool over those barrels, though. If my trash cans ever fail, I'm so buying a few.

 Seriously. My chickens are the best tools out there. They turn under weedy patches. They fertilize. They do pest control. And on top of that, they give me fresh eggs that are healthier than supermarket eggs because their free range diet and fresh air lifestyle makes scientifically proven better eggs. Of course, I do have to cage my lettuce type crops up like they're in produce prison if I'm letting the hens into the garden, but it is a small price to pay for all the grub and tick removal they do.

 I know. You thought a deluxe compost bin would be the first thing on my list, right? Here's the thing. I have a very nice bin that I got for a birthday gift a few years ago. I use it. I do. And it works just fine. Scraps go in. I wait awhile. Compost comes out. A little compost. Or, I just toss scraps on the tidy compost heap next to the compost bin and stand back as fast as I can to get out of the way of my feathered composting experts and watch them turn the whole thing over more thoroughly than any man made tool can ever turn it. And then I wait awhile and get a whole bunch of compost. Once you have chickens, I don't know if compost bins are really a necessary addition.

However, if you really want a compost bin, there are a lot of nice models that have all sorts of bells and whistles or you can make a fairly functional bin yourself with cinder blocks or even old tires.