Organic Vegetable Gardening Tools

The Importance of Your Organic Vegetable Gardening Tools

Today, gardening tools are bulk-produced for sale and easily attained at your local home improvement and garden center, but at one time in our history (and now in many developing countries) gardening tools were highly prized, and crucial for the livelihood of a family. I think, we often take our gardening tools for granted and don't realize how important they really are.

In our agrarian history, a well-built hoe and a sturdy rake meant that you were able to grow food to feed yourself and our neighbors, and the people who made these tools were considered essential and very important craftsmen.

Ironically if I were given a choice between two tools, I would choose my shovel and my bow rake. I could almost do everything with them - weed, plant trees, double-dig, cultivate, aerate the soil and clean things up. Of course I would dearly miss my wheelbarrow.

Historically, when man went from hunter-gatherer and began growing and extending the native food sources to using his hands and hunting tools he quickly found out that it was much easier and less painful to use different tools to work the soil. It was from this time on; man has been ingenuously creating better tools to cultivate the soil and their crops.

Today when you go into a home improvement or hardware store to buy a gardening tool, you'll be amazed with many types of tools. How do you know which one is right for the job? My advice is to keep it simple – get the gardening tool you need, and sporadically experiment with those you're not familiar.

Caring for Your Organic Vegetable Gardening Tools

• Remove all soil from your tools after each use. Often hosing them off is all you need to do. You may need to use a screwdriver to remove dried soil.
• Never store your tools wet. Make sure they are dried completely before storing to prevent rusting and wood handle rot.
• It's not necessary, but each garden season rub linseed oil on your wooden handles to help preserve them.
• After each use, wipe the metal parts of pruners, shears, and loppers with vegetable oil. I'm suspicious of using motor oil and its long term affect on your plants.
• During the off season sharpen your tools. You can use a whetstone for sharpening cutting tools. Also a file can be used to remove nicks and smooth the edges of your shovels and trowels.

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