What's your favourite garden tool?

[Roseburn]

I bought this dandelion weeder earlier this year and I love it.

It lives by my back door and I take it out with me on the way to the bins and dig out a dandelion or ( two or three) on the way, or I just go for a wander round the grass if I'm at a loose end and look for zig zaggy leaves to dig up. So satisfying.

Are there other tools I should know about? Tell me what else I need in my garden bag!

Hand fork and secateurs - nothing more satisfying than walking around deadheading and hand fork for lifting dandelions.

I too love my hori hori knife (a birthday gift from DH after much hint dropping). It's a great multi-purpose tool. I also love my Felco secateurs (last year's birthday gift 😆) and I get a lot of use out of a hand held double hoe too www.google.com/search?q=double+hoe+hand+tool+wolf+garten&client=ms-unknown&prmd=sivn&sxsrf=ALeKk01Pm6TAhTS8Y-TH7fe3oBVtfA5kpA:1590085955132&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiO-pHky8XpAhXUkFwKHeDqALgQ_AUoAnoECA0QAg&biw=412&bih=757&dpr=2.63#imgrc=wn41JiRW_dcv2M

DH

DH

I like the look of this.
But what is it actually for?

Oh great thread as I have a birthday coming up. I too am a fan of the dandelion weeder but I use it for lots of weeding - it's great if you've got limited space and a lot of plants!

I love my dandelion fork too, use it for all sorts of weeds in tight spaces (i get a lot of buttercups in my garden borders and it winkles out the rootballs nicely). I use a handfork all the time at the allotment for getting couch grass and bindweed roots cleared.

I think my absolute favourite is my long handled fork though. It has a straight pole handle and comes up to my shoulder, the leverage it gives makes breaking up the clay soil at the allotment a breeze.

I have a hand fork! It was my mums so there sentimental value too but it's great for my very weedy flowerbed!

I have a Golden Spade from Niwaki and it’s the most lightweight lady spade ever, so easy to dig with. I also have their basic Higonokami folding penknife which is great. Also Jakoti hand shears and Tobisho secateurs. And if you pick flowers or veg you simply must have a Sussex trug to carry them in!

OP thank you so much for your post - I had no idea such a tool existed! We have about a million dandelions on our lawn and, even worse, some really horrible thistles (we're surrounded by fields, and last year the farmer very annoyingly let some really thumping great thistles go to seed and blow all over us).

I have been digging them out of the lawn with a trowel but as you can imagine it makes quite a hole, even if I'm really careful . Thanks!

That fork thing is for when you have edged the lawn and then you scrape along in the dirt 'trough' (between the edge of the lawn and the border) and collect up all the grass clippings. That's what it is used for here anyway!

So hard to choose...

I've got a weeding tool I like a lot, a bit like the OPs but it's got a bend in it, more like this one www.amazon.co.uk/Spear-Jackson-Elements-Daisy-Grubber/dp/B003TOJVIG

And good secateurs with a sheath I can attach to a belt loop, so I don't put them down in the undergrowth and lose them.

I'm also a fan of using scissors in the garden - I've got a cheap pair of kitchen scissors which I find easier for trimming the edge of the lawn than anything else I've tried, properly sharp and one handed.

But the most satisfying is a good pair of extending handle loppers which DH for me for Xmas last year. They're really sharp, and extend both my range (I'm short) and leverage.m

Another vote for the hori hori knife.

As an English teacher language geek, I love the onomatopoeia of the name...but mainly I love feeling like a badass gardener.

Plus it works brilliantly.

I have this beast, which was a godsend when we took up a deck and then left it too long to plant the garden, the entire space was full of dandelions.

I like the look of that vegetable hoe up thread, our garden is stony.

I’m not sure I garden very well, apart from the magic weeding machine I seem to get by with a spade, fork, secateurs and trowel. I chuck top dressing on to cover the worst and grow ground cover plants where possible.

Ooh, I'd forgotten about my single handed grass shears. These are absolutely brilliant for trimming grass edges wolfgarten-tools.co.uk/products/ranges/cutting-tools/lawn-shears/rjz-single-handed-grass-shear

Would the hori hori knife work for thistles with giant roots? I'm trying to not use weed killer on the garden, but the garden is full of thistles and it's seriously testing my commitment to the bees!

@Roseburn I dont know what it's for but it's next on my list

Paving knife this is the one I got for going at the dandelions in between paving slabs

I also have the hand shears and much prefer trimming the edge of the grass with them than strimming

Yes! The hori hori knife is fantastic for getting deep tap roots out intact.

I bought this bulb planter last year and it’s my absolute favourite. Saved so much time!

My mate Dave.

Thanks for starting this thread op, just ordered a hori hori trowel for MIL 👍🏻

Battery powered chainsaw - game changer!

Has anyone got a long handled tool for scraping moss etc off paving slabs? My aunt has bad arthritis and can't bend down but is trying to remove moss and I'm afraid she will fall.

I've got one of those long handled wire brushes for getting moss out from the cracks in block paving but it isn't great for flat surfaces, we pressure wash our slabs once in a while.

Would a hoe do for scraping off moss.

I have my grandfather's old garden fork. The tines are quite fine like a hay fork but it means it cuts through the soil easily making the digging lighter. The handle has seen better days though.