Back to Gardening Chapter 3, Part C: Gearing Up

I am always amazed at the multitude of useless tools that I see for sale at garden centers. This chapter presents a no-nonsense discussion of the basic tools needed to start gardening.

This chapter of the book is an edited version of the third article that I wrote in April 2022 for this substack page. No gardening book would be complete without a chapter on tools, but since I already wrote about that in a previous article, I thought it made sense to just revisit that content, edit, and enhance. Have a read:

Chapter 3 Part C: Gearing Up with the Right Tools

I am always amazed at the multitude of useless tools that I see for sale at garden centers. Horticulture is thousands of years old,  and while certain tools do make the job easier, in a pinch, you could get by like our ancient ancestors with a basket, a pointed stick and your bare hands. In essence, garden tools facilitate four basic tasks: digging stuff, spreading stuff, moving stuff, and cutting things. A good set of tools should help do all of these things, but depending on the size and scale of one’s garden, that set of tools need not break the bank

Here are all the basic tools that I use for gardening. The knife, bucket and ho mi digger are used most often.

Light Diggers

The cheapest digging tool in the world is your hands and they are extremely versatile. I would say that at least half the cultivation that takes place in my garden is probably done with my hands. A couple of cheap pairs of dollar store gloves are all you need here. A step up would be a digging tool, and while I see many forks and scoops and other useless junk, for my money the "ho mi digger" (photo below) is the king. This simple Bronze Age tool , often marketed as the “EZ Digger” is fantastic. Loosely translated, it is my understanding the “ho mi” means "hand plow” - and this can be seen by its design with the slight tilt of the blade and its triangular shape, which makes it very ergonomic for digging, weeding and a range of other tasks. Indeed, if I were going on a spaceship to colonize another planet and I could only bring one tool in a backpack, it would be this one.

Second only to the ho mi is the humble garden trowel - which is essentially a tiny, pointy shovel. It is nowhere near as good as the ho in general, but it is an excellent specialized tool for planting transplants and tubers like potatoes, and for moving plants mid-season.