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Tools you wish you’d bought sooner

Gardening_PunkGardening_Punk Posts: 21
in Tools and techniques
So, following a similar thread on another forum I use, I thought this may work well on here. 

What are the tools you have bought that you wish you’d had years ago? Really useful to share recommendations and see what I’ve been missing! 

Mine is a very simple one, the edging knife. I’ve always worked with a spade, never getting a properly straight edge or cutting through turf as easily as I should. It’s a revelation now I have it! 



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  • LiriodendronLiriodendron Posts: 7,937
    A mattock.  Bent a couple of digging forks trying to remove buried rocks before I bought the right tool for the job...
    "The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life."  Rabindranath Tagore
  • pitter-patterpitter-patter Posts: 2,107
    A mattock for me too, for the same reason as @Liriodendron. 😔  Maybe in the future I could say a hori hori... For now, it’s digging the rocks out of the soil.
  • GemmaJFGemmaJF Posts: 2,286
    Mattock for me too, everyone should have one. I have two, one has the mattock one side and a root cutter the other, the other one is a mattock and pick axe. 

    I dug a border last year and had to take out football sized lumps of old tarmac, only hand tools that made sense.

    I quite like my hand stump splitter as well though.

  • BenCottoBenCotto Posts: 4,116
    My wall mounted, automatic retracting hosepipe by Gardena. Also the hori hori trowelly trowelly thing.
    Rutland, England
  • micearguersmicearguers Posts: 605
    Two-pronged weeding fork, tripod ladder.
  • Butterfly66Butterfly66 Posts: 781
    Tripod ladder - always hesitated before as seemed expensive so spent years of wobbling on our old ladder and never climbing high enough to do jobs properly. It’s wonderful, will happily climb up and down without anyone there to hold it.
     If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”—Marcus Tullius Cicero
    East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham
  • strelitzia32strelitzia32 Posts: 767
    Automatic hose reel! The sigh of relief each time I don't have to manually rewind 40m of pipe every day. I have the hozelock one, it's great.

    That, plus a quality bulb planter. I used to stubbornly dig bulb holes by hand, then got a planter and realized the time saving and ease.
  • KT53KT53 Posts: 7,710
    Hori Hori trowel.
  • Gardening_PunkGardening_Punk Posts: 21

    strelitzia32 said:
    Automatic hose reel! The sigh of relief each time I don't have to manually rewind 40m of pipe every day. I have the hozelock one, it's great.

    That, plus a quality bulb planter. I used to stubbornly dig bulb holes by hand, then got a planter and realized the time saving and ease.
    Going to look at one of those! We have a long garden (35 meters) and it’s a pain reeling it all back in. 

    I’m new to gardening to I will look at the Bulb planter as well. 

    Are there any particular brands I should look out for gardening tools, or any to avoid? I like to try to buy well and buy once where possible but with gardening stuff there is so many brands I don’t know what’s what at the moment. 
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