gardening gear

by Ether

Gloves

Well, thanks to a readers comment I went ahead and got the gloves I was pondering earlier. I guess it wasn’t so hard to win me over after all, though I will say that the pretty designs on the fingers and the label saying that they were machine washable helped lure me in a good bit. What’s that? Target audience? Well perhaps…

It has come to my attention that I am sorely lacking in certain areas of the gardening gear department. The department in question is that of weed annihilation. I’ve always relied on my (well, ok, initially it was my mother’s) hori-hori knife. That unassuming tool really has served me well, and until now I never felt I was missing out on anything.

Yeah, until now. That’s the danger of reading garden blogs, you start discovering things you didn’t think you needed, but now you lust over. Right now it seems everyone else has an assortment of hoes except me. Of course you can’t talk about hoes without mentioning Carol of May Dreams Gardens with her collection. Recent days have found me poking about various blogs into their older posts, and lo and behold- more hoes! So I suppose I should get a hoe, or a few hoes, I’m just not sure what sort is ideal for me. I think the reason I’ve never needed one is I do such intensive style gardening that there isn’t much room for weeds to really grow. This year there will be some more space amongst my veggies, so I might actually need one of these tools. I’ll leave the suggestion lines open to all of you gentle readers- what hoes do you like? Have you ever met a hoe you didn’t like? Any general hoe thoughts?


4 Responses to “gardening gear”

  1. Carol, May Dreams Gardens Says:
    March 23rd, 2008 at 7:49 pm

    I never met a hoe I didn’t like! If people ask, I usually recommend two different hoes. The more traditional hoe that can be used to move soil around, make a trench, chop it up, etc. and a stirrup hoe which is good for weeding but doesn’t really move the soil as it cuts out the weeds.

    How’s that? Most of the time when people ask me to choose a favorite hoe, I tell them I just can’t!

  2. Ether Says:
    March 23rd, 2008 at 10:41 pm

    Thanks Carol! So, do you think those two would be the best choices for someone who does intensive raised-bed gardening too? Think SFG but with a bit less rigidity and a bit more inter-planting.

  3. Carol, May Dreams Gardens Says:
    March 25th, 2008 at 5:02 pm

    Yes, those two would be what I use most in my own intensive raised-bed gardens. I also use a Cape Cod Weeder quite a bit and a small hand rake, shaped like a claw.

  4. reggieCasual Says:
    March 28th, 2008 at 7:18 am

    I never knew there were so many kinds of hoes. I think I’m going to splurge this year on a real pair of gardening gloves rather than the cheap pair of cloth gloves I usually get from the discount bin at Lowes. Let’s just hope high-performance gardening gloves live up to their name.

Leave a Comment