Portal:Garden tools
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Introduction
A garden tool is any one of many tools made for gardens and gardening and overlaps with the range of tools made for agriculture and horticulture. Garden tools can also be hand tools and power tools.
Selected general articles
Small spade for clay soil; the other one for sandy soil and loamy soil
A spade is a tool primarily for digging, comprising a blade – typically narrower and less curved than that of a shovel – and a long handle. Early spades were made of riven wood or of animal bones (often shoulder blades). After the art of metalworking was developed, spades were made with sharper tips of metal. Before the introduction of metal spades manual labor was less efficient at moving earth, with picks being required to break up the soil in addition to a spade for moving the dirt. With a metal tip, a spade can both break and move the earth in most situations, increasing efficiency. Read more...
A scythe (/saɪð/, /saɪθ/[citation needed]) is an agricultural hand tool for mowing grass or reaping crops. It has largely been replaced by horse-drawn and then tractor machinery, but is still used in some areas of Europe and Asia.
The word "scythe" derives from Old English siðe. In Middle English and after it was usually spelt sithe or sythe. However, in the 15th century some writers began to use the sc- spelling as they thought (wrongly) the word was related to the Latin scindere (meaning "to cut"). Nevertheless, the sithe spelling lingered and notably appears in Noah Webster's dictionaries. Read more...
A hoe is an ancient and versatile agricultural and horticultural hand tool used to shape soil, remove weeds, clear soil, and harvest root crops. Shaping the soil includes piling soil around the base of plants (hilling), digging narrow furrows (drills) and shallow trenches for planting seeds or bulbs. Weeding with a hoe includes agitating the surface of the soil or cutting foliage from roots, and clearing soil of old roots and crop residues. Hoes for digging and moving soil are used to harvest root crops such as potatoes. Read more...
A riddle is a large sieve used to separate soil or compost particles, or for separating soil from vegetables. Read more...
A lawn aerator is a garden tool designed to create holes in the soil in order to help lawn grasses grow. In compacted lawns, aeration improves soil drainage and encourages worms, microfauna and microflora which require oxygen. Read more...
Pruning shears, also called hand pruners (in American English), or secateurs, are a type of scissors for use on plants. They are strong enough to prune hard branches of trees and shrubs, sometimes up to two centimetres thick. They are used in gardening, arboriculture, farming, flower arranging, and nature conservation, where fine-scale habitat management is required.
Loppers are a larger, two-handed, long-handled version for branches thicker than pruning shears can cut. Read more...
A garden hose, hosepipe, or simply hose is a flexible tube used to convey water. There are a number of common attachments available for the end of the hose, such as sprayers and sprinklers (which are used to concentrate water at one point or to spread it over a large area). Hoses are usually attached to a hose spigot or tap. Read more...- A Stihl chainsaw
A chainsaw is a portable, mechanical saw which cuts with a set of teeth attached to a rotating chain that runs along a guide bar. It is used in activities such as tree felling, limbing, bucking, pruning, cutting firebreaks in wildland fire suppression and harvesting of firewood. Chainsaws with specially designed bar and chain combinations have been developed as tools for use in chainsaw art and chainsaw mills. Specialized chainsaws are used for cutting concrete. Chainsaws are sometimes used for cutting ice, for example for ice sculpture and in Finland for winter swimming. Someone who uses a saw is a sawyer. Read more... - Grass shears differ from pruning shears in being long-handled and having the handles at right-angles to the blades. They can be used to cut grass from a standing position. Two kinds are available: with the blades horizontal and with the blades vertical. Horizontal blades are used to remove grass which has not been cut by the lawn mower, while vertical blades are used for trimming the edges of a lawn.
In 1939, a version of the vertical grass shears was invented having a long handle with a lever at the top, and wheels at the bottom with the shears. This enabled the user to trim the edge of the grass near the sidewalk and driveway. Powered trimmers have for all practical purposes replaced this type of grass shears. Read more...
A machete (/məˈʃɛti/; Spanish pronunciation: [maˈtʃete]) is a broad blade used either as an implement like an axe, or in combat like a short sword. The blade is typically 32.5 to 45 centimetres (12.8 to 17.7 in) long and usually under 3 millimetres (0.12 in) thick. In the Spanish language, the word is a diminutive form of the word macho, which was used to refer to sledgehammers. In the English language, an equivalent term is matchet, though it is less commonly used. In the English-speaking Caribbean, such as Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, and Grenada and in Trinidad and Tobago, the term cutlass is used for these agricultural tools. Read more...
A watering can (or watering pot) is a portable container, usually with a handle and a spout, used to water plants by hand. It has been in use since at least 79 A.D. and has since seen many improvements in design. Apart from watering plants, it has varied uses, as it is a fairly versatile tool.
The capacity of the container can be anywhere from 0.5 litres (for indoor household plants) to 10 litres (for general garden use). It is usually made of metal, ceramic or plastic. At the end of the spout, a "rose" (a device, like a cap, with small holes) can be placed to break up the stream of water into droplets, to avoid excessive water pressure on the soil or on delicate plants. Read more...- A daisy grubber is a garden tool that is used to pull out roots. It is effective because it can pull out deep roots yet cause little or no disturbance to the surrounding soil. Read more...
A Hori-Hori, sometimes referred to as a "soil knife" or a "weeding knife", is a heavy serrated multi-purpose steel blade for gardening jobs such as digging or cutting. The blade is sharp on both sides and comes to a semi-sharp point at the end.
The word “Hori” (ホリ) means "to dig" in Japanese and "hori-hori" is the onomatopoeia for a digging sound. The tool itself is commonly referred to as a レジャーナイフ, "leisure knife" or a 山菜ナイフ, "Sansai(=Mountain-vegetable)knife" in Japan. Read more...- A shovel is a tool for digging, lifting, and moving bulk materials, such as soil, coal, gravel, snow, sand, or ore.
Most shovels are hand tools consisting of a broad blade fixed to a medium-length handle. Shovel blades are usually made of sheet steel or hard plastics and are very strong. Shovel handles are usually made of wood (especially specific varieties such as ash or maple) or glass-reinforced plastic (fibreglass). Read more...
A hedge trimmer, duck
trimmer, or bush trimmer, is a gardening tool or machine used for trimming (cutting, pruning) hedges or solitary shrubs (bushes). Different designs as well as manual and powered versions of hedge trimmers exist. Read more...- An edge trimmer or lawn edger is a tool, either manual or motorised, to form distinct boundaries between a lawn, typically consisting of a grass, or other soft botanical ground cover, and another ground surface feature such as a paved, concreted or asphalted area, or a granular material such as sand or gravel, or simply uncovered soil, for example an unbounded garden.
There are six main types of lawn edger:- Manual
- Spade based
- Roller based
- Hand shears
- Motorised
- Adaptable string trimmer
- Single-wheel purpose-design
- Multi-wheel purpose-design
Purpose designed lawn edgers are more time efficient for long even edges and string trimmers are more efficient for angular edges and around interrupting features such as rocks. Spade based, roller based, and adaptable string trimmer designs may all be known as stick trimmers.[citation needed] Read more... - Manual
A plough (UK) or plow (US; both /plaʊ/) is a tool or farm implement used in farming for initial cultivation of soil in preparation for sowing seed or planting to loosen or turn the soil. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by working animals such as oxen and horses, but in modern times are mostly drawn by tractors. A plough may be made of wood, iron, or steel frame with an attached blade or stick used to cut the soil and loosen it. It has been a basic instrument for most of recorded history, although despite archeological evidence for its use written references to the plough do not appear in the English language before c. 1100, after which point it is referenced frequently. The plough represents one of the major agricultural inventions in human history. The earliest ploughs were wheelless, and the Romans used a wheelless plough called the aratrum, but Celtic peoples began using wheeled ploughs during the Roman era.
The primary purpose of ploughing is to turn over the upper layer of the soil, bringing fresh nutrients to the surface, while burying weeds and the remains of previous crops and allowing them to break down. As the plough is drawn through the soil it creates long trenches of fertile soil called furrows. In modern use, a ploughed field is typically left to dry out, and is then harrowed before planting. Ploughing and cultivating a soil homogenises and modifies the upper 12 to 25 centimetres (5 to 10 in) of the soil to form a plough layer. In many soils, the majority of fine plant feeder roots can be found in the topsoil or plough layer. Read more...
A machete (/məˈʃɛti/; Spanish pronunciation: [maˈtʃete]) is a broad blade used either as an implement like an axe, or in combat like a short sword. The blade is typically 32.5 to 45 centimetres (12.8 to 17.7 in) long and usually under 3 millimetres (0.12 in) thick. In the Spanish language, the word is a diminutive form of the word macho, which was used to refer to sledgehammers. In the English language, an equivalent term is matchet, though it is less commonly used. In the English-speaking Caribbean, such as Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, and Grenada and in Trinidad and Tobago, the term cutlass is used for these agricultural tools. Read more...
A cultivator is any of several types of farm implement used for secondary tillage. One sense of the name refers to frames with teeth (also called shanks) that pierce the soil as they are dragged through it linearly. Another sense refers to machines that use rotary motion of disks or teeth to accomplish a similar result. The rotary tiller is a principal example.
Cultivators stir and pulverize the soil, either before planting (to aerate the soil and prepare a smooth, loose seedbed) or after the crop has begun growing (to kill weeds—controlled disturbance of the topsoil close to the crop plants kills the surrounding weeds by uprooting them, burying their leaves to disrupt their photosynthesis, or a combination of both). Unlike a harrow, which disturbs the entire surface of the soil, cultivators are designed to disturb the soil in careful patterns, sparing the crop plants but disrupting the weeds. Read more...
A skid-steer loader with an earth auger attachment.
An auger is a drilling device, or drill bit, that usually includes a rotating helical screw blade called a "flighting" to act as a screw conveyor to remove the drilled out material. The rotation of the blade causes the material to move out of the hole being drilled. Read more...
A Grass Stitcher is a product primarily used to repair and aerate lawns. Common goals include weed control by agitating the surface of the soil, loosening the soil, and preparing it prior to spreading grass seed. As a tool it is hand held and designed to be used while standing and have the spiked wheels pushed back and forth over the earth to be treated.
In some ways, Grass Stitchers are similar to garden cultivators. While cultivators till the soil by design, the grass stitcher actually prepares a seed bed ideal for sowing grass seed. Read more...
A whipper-snipper, also called a "weed-whip", "string trimmer", "weed-whacker", a "weed eater", a "line trimmer" or a "strimmer" (in the UK and Ireland), is a tool which uses a flexible monofilament line instead of a blade for cutting grass and other plants near objects, or on steep or irregular terrain. It consists of a cutting tip at the end of a long shaft with a handle. Read more...
A wheelbarrow is a small hand-propelled vehicle, usually with just one wheel, designed to be pushed and guided by a single person using two handles at the rear, or by a sail to push the ancient wheelbarrow by wind. The term "wheelbarrow" is made of two words: "wheel" and "barrow." "Barrow" is a derivation of the Old English "bearwe" which was a device used for carrying loads.
The wheelbarrow is designed to distribute the weight of its load between the wheel and the operator, so enabling the convenient carriage of heavier and bulkier loads than would be possible were the weight carried entirely by the operator. As such it is a second-class lever. Traditional Chinese wheelbarrows, however, had a central wheel supporting the whole load. Use of wheelbarrows is common in the construction industry and in gardening. Typical capacity is approximately 100 liters (4 cubic feet) of material. Read more...
A typical modern gasoline/petrol powered rotary "push mower" (or grass cutter) which has self-powered cutting blades, but still requires human power to move across the ground. "Walk-behind" mowers can be self-propelled, only requiring a human to walk behind and guide the mower. Mowers of the type displayed usually vary in width from 20 to 24 inches.
A lawn mower (also named as mower or lawnmower) is a machine utilizing one or more revolving blades to cut a grass surface to an even height. The height of the cut grass may be fixed by the design of the mower, but generally is adjustable by the operator, typically by a single master lever, or by a lever or nut and bolt on each of the machine's wheels. The blades may be powered by muscle, with wheels mechanically connected to the cutting blades so that when the mower is pushed forward, the blades spin, or the machine may have a battery-powered or plug-in electric motor. The most common power source for lawn mowers is a small (typically one cylinder) internal combustion engine. Smaller mowers often lack any form of propulsion, requiring human power to move over a surface; "walk-behind" mowers are self-propelled, requiring a human only to walk behind and guide them. Larger lawn mowers are usually either self-propelled "walk-behind" types, or more often, are "ride-on" mowers, equipped so the operator can ride on the mower and control it. A robotic lawn mower ("lawn-mowing bot", "mowbot", etc.) is designed to operate either entirely on its own, or less commonly by an operator by remote control.
Two main styles of blades are used in lawn mowers. Lawn mowers employing a single blade that rotates about a single vertical axis are known as rotary mowers, while those employing a cutting bar and multiple blade assembly that rotates about a single horizontal axis are known as cylinder or reel mowers (although in some versions, the cutting bar is the only blade, and the rotating assembly consists of flat metal pieces which force the blades of grass against the sharp cutting bar). Read more...
An impact sprinkler head in action
An Irrigation sprinkler (also known as a water sprinkler or simply a sprinkler) is a device used to irrigate agricultural crops, lawns, landscapes, golf courses, and other areas. They are also used for cooling and for the control of airborne dust.[citation needed] Sprinkler irrigation is the method of applying water to a controlled manner in that is similar to rainfall. The water is distributed through a network that may consist of pumps, valves, pipes, and sprinklers. Irrigation sprinklers can be used for residential, industrial, and agricultural usage. Read more...
A number of common weeding tools are designed to ease the task of removing weeds from gardens and lawns.- The fulcrum head weeder has a split tip like a serpent's tongue, and a long thin handle. Many models have a curved piece of metal along the handle which is put against the ground while the tip is digging. The curved metal piece acts as a fulcrum in a lever system. It is helpful to remove weeds either with a tap root or a fibrous root system.
- The Cape Cod weeder has a thin, long handle and a triangular scraping head. When the handle is held parallel to the ground, the head points downward.
- The crack weeder is a relative of the Cape Cod Weeder. It is designed to scrape out weeds growing in crevices, stone walls and other deep and narrow places. The plane of the L-shaped scraping blade includes the handle; the bottom of the "L" is parallel to it.
- Homi is a short-handled traditional weeding and ploughing tool used by Korean People.
A pickaxe, pick-axe, or pick is a hand tool with a hard head attached perpendicular to the handle.
The head is usually made of metal, and the handle is most commonly wood, metal or fiberglass. The head is a spike ending in a sharp point, may curve slightly, and often has a counter-weight to improve ease of use. The stronger the spike, the more effectively the tool can pierce the surface. Rocking the embedded spike about and removing it can then break up the surface. Read more...
A cultivator is any of several types of farm implement used for secondary tillage. One sense of the name refers to frames with teeth (also called shanks) that pierce the soil as they are dragged through it linearly. Another sense refers to machines that use rotary motion of disks or teeth to accomplish a similar result. The rotary tiller is a principal example.
Cultivators stir and pulverize the soil, either before planting (to aerate the soil and prepare a smooth, loose seedbed) or after the crop has begun growing (to kill weeds—controlled disturbance of the topsoil close to the crop plants kills the surrounding weeds by uprooting them, burying their leaves to disrupt their photosynthesis, or a combination of both). Unlike a harrow, which disturbs the entire surface of the soil, cultivators are designed to disturb the soil in careful patterns, sparing the crop plants but disrupting the weeds. Read more...
Stihl leaf blowers
A leaf blower (often referred to as simply a blower) is a gardening tool that propels air out of a nozzle to move debris such as leaves and grass cuttings. Leaf blowers are powered by electric or gasoline motors. Gasoline models have traditionally been two-stroke engines, but four-stroke engines were recently introduced to partially address air pollution concerns. Leaf blowers are typically self-contained handheld units, or backpack mounted units with a handheld wand. The latter is more ergonomic for prolonged use. Larger units may rest on wheels and even use a motor for propulsion. These are sometimes called "walk behind leaf blowers" because they must be pushed by hand to be operated.
Some units can also suck in leaves and small twigs via a vacuum, and shred them into a bag. In that role it is called a blower vac. Read more...
A pitchfork next to a compost bin
A pitchfork is an agricultural tool with a long handle and tynes used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw or leaves. Read more...
An axe (British English) or ax (American English; see spelling differences) is an implement that has been used for millennia to shape, split and cut wood; to harvest timber; as a weapon; and as a ceremonial or heraldic symbol. The axe has many forms and specialised uses but generally consists of an axe head with a handle, or helve.
Before the modern axe, the stone-age hand axe was used from 1.5 million years BP without a handle. It was later fastened to a wooden handle. The earliest examples of handled axes have heads of stone with some form of wooden handle attached (hafted) in a method to suit the available materials and use. Axes made of copper, bronze, iron and steel appeared as these technologies developed. Axes are usually composed of a head and a handle. Read more...
A rake (Old English raca, cognate with Dutch raak, German Rechen, from the root meaning "to scrape together", "heap up") is a broom for outside use; a horticultural implement consisting of a toothed bar fixed transversely to a handle, and used to collect leaves, hay, grass, etc., and in gardening, for loosening the soil, light weeding and levelling, removing dead grass from lawns, and generally for purposes performed in agriculture by the harrow.
Large mechanized versions of rakes are used in farming, called hay rakes, are built in many different forms (e.g. star-wheel rakes, rotary rakes, etc.). Nonmechanized farming may be done with various forms of a hand rake. Read more...
A dibber or dibble or dibbler is a pointed wooden stick for making holes in the ground so that seeds, seedlings or small bulbs can be planted. Dibbers come in a variety of designs including the straight dibber, T-handled dibber, trowel dibber, and L-shaped dibber. Read more...
A sickle, bagging hook or reaping-hook, is a hand-held agricultural tool designed with variously curved blades and typically used for harvesting, or reaping, grain crops or cutting succulent forage chiefly for feeding livestock, either freshly cut or dried as hay. Falx was a synonym but was later used to mean any of a number of tools that had a curved blade that was sharp on the inside edge such as a scythe.
Since the beginning of the Iron Age hundreds of region-specific variants of the sickle have evolved, initially of iron and later steel. This great diversity of sickle types across many cultures can be divided into smooth or serrated blades, both of which can be used for cutting either green grass or mature cereals using slightly different techniques. The serrated blade that originated in prehistoric sickles still dominates in the reaping of grain and is even found in modern grain-harvesting machines and in some kitchen knives. Read more...
Loppers are a type of scissors used for pruning twigs and small branches, like secateurs with very long handles. They are the largest type of manual garden cutting tool.
They are usually operated with two hands, and with handles typically between 30 centimetres (12 in) & 91 centimetres (36 in) long to give good leverage. Some have telescopic handles which can be extended to a length of two metres, in order to increase leverage and to reach high branches on a tree. Loppers are mainly used for the pruning of tree branches with diameters less than 5 centimetres (2 in). Some of the newer lopper designs have a gear or compound lever system which increases the force applied to the blades, or a ratchet drive. Read more...
A Potting bench or gardening table is a kind of workbench used for small gardening tasks such as transplanting seedlings. A basic potting bench has a work surface at bench height, comfortable for a standing person; and storage for potting soil, pots, and tools. The same furniture is often also used to display potted plants, even indoors.
Since this type of furniture is often exposed to soil, water, and sunlight, it must be made from weather-resistant materials if it is not to decay rapidly. Cedar wood is a popular choice. Plastic potting benches are cheaper and, for those who can afford it, there is teak. Metal construction may be considered if corrosion can be controlled. Read more...
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