Care of gardening tools

Some would say gardening tools are just tools, but for me they are a kind of an old friend, in a weird sort of way. I've got a couple of shovels with the fiberglass handles, but I just don't care for them. There is something about an American-made tool with a hickory handle. One is just a tool, but the latter is more than a tool.

I carry many of my gardening tools with me in a small cart I built a number of years ago. I pull this cart with my four-wheeler, which also carries a number of my small hand tools. My bigger tools consist of a wooden-handled shovel; wooden-handled rake; two Rogue hoes, which are 6 and 10 inches wide; a wooden-handled collinear hoe; a wooden-handled small hoe; and a five-tine pitch fork. My small hand tools consist of a pair of Felco shears, a Fiskars snipper, a small garden trowel, an old corn knife or corn machete and a collinear hoe without the handle.

I try to clean the metal parts of these tools on a daily basis. When I get through using them I either scrape them off and clean them or wash them off with water. Once they are clean I like to spray them down with WD40. This solvent and lubricant seems to protect the metal parts from rusting but it also seems to help keep the clay soil from sticking to the tools. I buy liquid WD40, and not the aerosol, and then use a pump sprayer.

The handles on my tools are almost totally of wood. Some like the new fiberglass handles but I don't. I like wood. I normally sand the handles of a new tool and remove most of the varnish or glaze from the wood. I then oil down the handle using teak oil or TruOil. This product gives the wood a kind of antique finish and also waterproofs it. I find that a natural wood finish free of varnish doesn't cause blisters nearly as bad as a varnished finish. But at the same time I like the look and feel of a wood-handled tool. Clean your handles regularly, maybe give them a light sanding and then oil them.

I use a few hoses to connect to my dripper water lines. I drain the water from these hoses and then roll them up and store in one of our sheds. Most of my water lines or dripper lines I drain as well and roll up and store out of the weather. If you have shutoffs or sprinklers where water gets trapped, it can freeze and cause some problems during the winter. I have shut offs on every row in our garden, so I open these up and drain them.

Many of my garden tools I use on a daily basis so I try to buy the best I can afford, and, at times, tools I probably couldn't have afforded. A quality tool will last a lifetime and you can hand it down to future gardeners. My wife and I have a small hoe we bought some 40 years ago back in Nebraska. It has the same handle it started out with. I believe it will last another 40 years.