Ramblings of Garden Tool Co.
Posts tagged garden trowel
Red Pig Garden Tools…Handmade, Hardworking and Made in the USA
01 month ago
When was the last time you had something in your hand that was truly handmade? Probably a long time, right? The days of products being made by a person and not a machine have gone by the wayside…well, not so!
There’s a small blacksmith shop in Boring, OR that still makes garden tools the old fashioned way…with fire, a heavy anvil, hammers and a lot of sweat.
Bob Denman, his wife Rita and an apprentice are all that make up the company Red Pig Garden Tools and they like it that way! Bob handcrafts each garden tool from raw steel the same way he’s been doing it for over 15 years…with fire and muscle.
Red Pig Garden Tool are now available at Garden Tool Company, so please click over to our website for a closer look at what real quality, handmade garden tools look like.
Click here to see more of these Red Pig Garden Tools.
Beauty and Brawn – the Dutch Tulip Trowel
03 months ago
by Anne Schreck
in Garden Tools
Does your soil bend a cheap trowel? If you are planting in hard clay soil, you will love the new tulip trowel from DeWit Tools. It may be called a tulip trowel but it will be a go to tool for all your planting needs. You won’t believe how sturdy the hand forged boron steel blade is and it is designed with three sharpened points in the shape of a crown that will make digging so much easier. You can even chop a root.
Tulip Trowel by DeWit Tools
The blade is deep and curved to make nice round holes and provide excellent scooping capabilities. Whether you are planting, transplanting or potting, it will meet your needs.
This awesome garden trowel will make a great gift for your favorite gardener – which may just be you!
Garden Trowels – They’re All The Same…Right?
04 months ago
It wasn’t too long ago that if you went looking for a garden trowel, you could go to 10 different places and buy a trowel at each place and you’d end up 10 almost identical looking trowels. And that was fine; I mean, all we used them for was digging small holes, planting, potting and maybe some occasional weeding.
Well, times have changed and some of the better garden tool makers are making specialty garden trowels. Don’t get me wrong, the traditional garden trowel is and always will be around and there will always be a use for them, but some tool makers have taken a look that the different jobs that a gardener does and adapted the trowel’s shape to fit a particular garden chore.
Good trowel – bad trowel. A good quality trowel should last you a lifetime, but all too often these days the garden tools available today are cheap knockoffs. A good garden trowel should have some weight to it and made of a good quality steel. Another good measure of the tools worth is its warranty. Is the tool maker proud enough of their tools to guarantee it for life?
So let’s take a look at some of the specialty (and traditional) trowels that are available to gardeners today. When looking at the different trowels, imagine how the trowel might help you and your gardening needs.
Tradition Garden Trowels – This is the trowel that most of us are familiar with. It usually has a slightly dished blade with a pointed or rounded end. The traditional trowel is a good all-around digging and planting tool.
Transplanting Garden Trowels – This trowel typically has longer, narrower blade making it easier to dig deep enough to remove a small plant and all its roots. This trowel could easily be called a potting trowel because its narrow blade makes it ideal for planting in tight quarters such as pots.
Weeding/Rockery Trowels – These trowels have a long slender blade that makes it great for digging deep to extract these long tap root weeds. This trowel is also great for gardeners that plant in very tight spaces such as rock gardens.
Potting Trowels – This trowel typically has a wide deep dished blade making it good for transferring soil from one place to another such as from bag to pot. Some makers have combined the deep dish with a little narrower blade for planting as well.
Other Trowels – While some trowels have a unique shape that is specific to a particular gardening job, there are others that combine some of the different features of the above trowels…even some that allow you to use both hands.
Like buying any garden tool, it’s up to you to decide which tool will work best for the way you garden. What works for the way I garden may not be the tool that works best for you. All of these trowels can be seen in greater detail on our website at Garden Tool Company or if you have a question, please give us a call at 1-800-830-4019.
The Right Garden Tools Can Make Starting Your Garden a Piece of Cake
01 year ago
by Anne Schreck
in Garden Tools
Garden kneeler seat
Unlike here in Fort Collins where it really isn’t even time to start seeds indoors, many people live in areas where planting time has arrived or is about to be there. When it comes to gardening tools, there are any number of them that you could call planting tools designed to help you in a variety of jobs required to get your garden off and running on the right foot.
One of the first jobs many experienced gardeners tackle is soil testing. Whether it relates to pH, nitrogen, temperature or moisture, the chemical balance and condition of the soil is one of the first things that should be looked at prior to planting anything. Garden Tool Company offers a wide variety of meters and test kits if you feel like doing it yourself, or most areas have an agricultural extension office nearby that will do the testing for you.
Clarington Forge riddles
If you are planting seeds, you might enjoy having a dibber or a Seedmaster hand seeder, but if you are planting seedlings you probably need a trowel, cultivator or garden knife. For a garden that is in area where you have not planted previously that might have lots of rocks in the soil, a riddle is a wonderful tool to have, but it may be a weeder that you need for such an area. When planting a lot of bulbs, it’s hard to beat the convenience of a bulb planter. If you prefer not to work on your hands and knees, there are a number of longer planting tools, such as the DeWit perennial spade or the Sneeboer planting boy hand spade or you might want to invest in a garden kneeler seat. Someone who prefers to use both hands, might enjoy a p-grip or drop grip style garden tool. And for the bigger planting jobs, there are any number of traditional length garden spades and forks to choose from, some of which are also offered with a long handle for less wear and tear on the back.
If you live in an apartment and don’t have access to much or any yard, your first need might be an allotment bag that you can plant your vegetables in and then move it around to catch the good sun. For any planting job, it is nice to have a good pair of garden gloves to keep your hands clean and avoid those blisters that can come from too much digging. Finally, garden shoes or clogs and garden tool carriers are helpful planting tools as well.
There are so many garden tools that can be called planting tools and while they are not all required to start your gardening, some of them are so handy that you might wonder how you ever managed to do your planting without them. So, if you are getting ready to start this year’s garden, we would love to have you stop by gardentoolcompany.com and take a look at the great gardening tools that we offer to help.
Drop grip trowel by DeWit
Every Gardener Needs a Great Trowel
71 year ago
by Anne Schreck
in Garden Tools
There are a lot of people who like to make lists of must have garden tools, but there are not really very many of them that you can’t make do without. However, I cannot imagine that anyone could have much fun trying to garden without a trowel. Whether you need to put that new plant in a pot or dig up a weed, you can do it with a trowel and these days it’s hard to believe just how many different kinds of trowels there are available. They come in a variety of sizes and materials, there are many different types of handles and some are even made to serve more than one function in the garden.
At Garden Tool Company, we offer more than fifteen different types of trowels to satisfy all your gardening needs. The biggest sellers are the basic garden or Dutch trowels and the transplanting trowels, but we also feature specialty trowels designed specifically for potting, weeding or cultivating. The Sneeboer potting trowel is designed to help prevent your potting soil from spilling and it’s made in either a right or left hand model. The soil scoop can open your potting soil bag with its serrated edge and Blake says you could even flip your burgers with the wide, flat Old Dutch Trowel. Sneeboer also makes two different long, thin and sharp trowels that are excellent for removing those tough long rooted weeds. Many of the trowels have handles typical of any garden hand tool, some feature a longer handle that can be used with two hands for greater leverage and the Sneeboer multi-shovel even features a cultivator on the other end making it an ideal tool for many different jobs in the garden.
All of the trowels made by DeWit and Sneeboer are hand forged and feature a lifetime warranty. Those and the trowels made by Burgon & Ball, Clarington Forge and GardenWorks all feature high quality steel. Come check them all out – after all, how can you call yourself a gardener, if you don’t have a great trowel?
The Narrow Bladed Weeding Trowel from Sneeboer Works Wonders on Long Roots
71 year ago
by Anne Schreck
in Garden Tools
As I have mentioned before, we have some amazingly long roots on some of our weeds here in Northern Colorado, so I decided to check out a narrow bladed weeding trowel to deal with them. This is one great tool for digging down and getting at those long stubborn roots. It has a pointed end, sharp sides and is made of really strong stainless steel. On one weed, I almost fell down the hill out back when we finally won the battle and pulled that stubborn sucker out.
It also came in really handy the next day when I needed to plant some seedlings in the garden. I was quickly able to dig a nice deep hole and just pop the little plants right in. I love this trowel!
If you want to learn more about these beautiful Sneeboer trowels, you can check them out at gardentoolcompany.com
List of Garden Tools You Must Have! (NOT)
01 year ago
Caution – Rant just ahead-
Is it just me, or are there too many articles with a “List of Garden Tools You Must Have”? While I know that the web is a pretty powerful tool – How in the hell do these people know what garden tools I need? How do they know whether I live in an apartment and only need a nice trowel for my container garden or a 300 acre estate and need four different size spades? Do they know that I am 6′ 4″ tall and like a longer handle?
Gardeners are all different and have different needs! We are tall and short, we are right and left handed and we have flower beds and large vegetable gardens. Because of these differences, only WE can decide which garden tools will make our gardening more enjoyable and less tiresome. So, I say – Cut it out with the “Garden Tool Must Have Lists” and start writing articles about how a particular garden tool can help the gardener.
-Rant Over-
The Aggie Trowel
01 year ago
by Anne Schreck
in Garden Tools
When we pack the garden tools for shipping, my husband and I like to include a personal thank you on the packing slip. The other day I was filling an order for a trowel and I noticed that they shipping address was in College Station, Texas, the home of Texas A&M. Now for those of you who don’t know me, I graduated from Texas Tech University and A&M is a big rival. So I wrote on the note that I hope he enjoyed his trowel, even though he had to live in College Station and I signed it Anne the Red Raider. When I went back to do the shipping label, I even noticed that he had a Texas A&M email address and laughed to myself.
Less than a week later an email arrived from a very nice man from the A&M Department of Horticulture. Now we rivals make a lot of funny of the Aggie intelligence and I had to chuckle when I saw that he originally wrote to Blake before re-reading the note and noticing that I was the Red Raider, but that is another story. He complimented our website and response time and thanked me for letting him know that I was a Red Raider. He copied a good friend of his at Texas Tech who is a member of the horticulture faculty saying that I should get to know her, but that still wasn’t the best part of the story.
It seems that the trowel was ordered to be engraved and presented as an award for the outstanding member of the A&M Horticulture Club this year. I thought that was so ironic and yet so exciting that, for the first time in my life, I said “Gig Em” in a complimentary way when I wrote him back. Of course, now I’m back to “Get Your Guns Up.”
