Top Gardening Tools for Your Best Backyard Garden

Having the right tools for the job is always important, and we have the top gardening tools for you to grow successful flower or vegetable gardens this year.

Top Gardening Tools – What to Look For

Our recommendations for the top gardening tools are convenient, durable, and easy to maintain.

1. Convenience

The best tools will be easy to use and feel comfortable in your hands. If the handles have small holes for hanging organization, they’re even better.

2. Durability

Every seasoned gardener will tell you to shop for quality over quantity. Wooden handles are nice, but they dry and break easier than steel. Look for tools that are made of heavy duty materials that will last a long time. Cheap tools, such as those made of plastic, are almost never worth the purchase.

3. Maintenance

The right garden tools should be easy to care for. Choosing steel blades that stay sharp longer, for example, will help set you up for success in the long run.

Hand Tools for the garden

Here’s a list of our top gardening tools for every avid gardener.

Sharp Hand Tools

• Hand Pruners – You’ll need to good pair of pruning shears for easy, clean cuts of plants.
• Precision Snips – I know that I just said don’t go cheap, but here’s where I break that rule. Every year, I like to purchase a couple of pairs of pointed snips from Dollar Tree. They are perfect for pruning tomato plant suckers.
• Garden Knife – The hori hori tool is nice to have, as it has a serrated blade along one side, and the whole thing is shaped like a spade. If I had to pick just one hand tool to keep, I’d label the Hori Hori garden knife the best garden tool.
• Pocket knife – I carry a pocket knife daily on the homestead, since I need a sharp blade multiple times each day. In the garden, I use it to cut open bags of soil or for cutting twine. My favorite is a light weight, folding box cutter with a razor blade.

Yard-Type Tools

• Shovel / hand trowel – A hand shovel is absolutely needed to plant your transplants, mark lines in the soil, mix soil or amendments, spread compost, dig holes, and any number of other uses (such as smash black widows). This garden tool becomes an extension of the gardener’s hand.
• Scuffle Hoe – Also known as the stirrup hoe, the scuffle hoe is the essential tool to keep for easy weeding of beds. It will save your back and save you time. Just make sure that you use it while the weeds are young and tender, and you’ll make lightning fast work of cultivating your garden bed.
• Long-handled Shovels – Obviously shovels are important, but make sure you have a flat shovel and a pointed shovel. They have different uses, and I promise, you’ll find yourself needing both.

• Traditional Garden Hoe – This is great for hilling up soil and digging out grass roots. It’ll get the more established weeds easier than the scuffle hoe.
• Leaf Rakes and Metal Rakes – Just like the shovels, the two different rakes will come in handy. The leaf rake is great for gathering compost material, while the metal rake is good for spreading soil or mulch.
• Garden Fork – Best known as the broadfork, this tool will help you to aerate the soil without disturbing the microbiology too much. 

The Top Gardening Tools for Starting Seeds

Start by checking out our Ultimate Seed Starting Guide to get you started on this part of your gardening journey. Then gather these high-quality tools to begin planting.

Containers For Holding Soil

• Pots – You’ll need a variety of sizes of pots to get started. The 2 and half inch pot is my favorite for starting most seeds; however, some things,  like tomatoes for example, need more space. A four inch pot serves us better for those.
• 1020 trays – Trays hold your pots, and allow for watering from beneath the plants. This helps to promote stronger roots and healthier plants. Go for sturdy. I can’t say enough about the Bootstrap Farmer 1020 trays. (no affiliation, I just believe in them that much.) I’ve been through tons of flimsy trays that crack when they’re filled, but these heavy-duty trays will last for many years. I even had a heifer step in one, and it held up just fine.
• Soil Block Maker – Perhaps you’d like to avoid the use of plastics in your gardening. The soil block maker will help you to start seeds indoors without pots. It takes a little practice, but this device is well worth the investment. You can stack them up in 1020 trays for easy holding and watering.

Indoor Growing Helpers

• Grow Lights – This must-have tool will help you get a jump start on your growing season. You’ll be able to start your seedlings ahead of time, before your last frost date.
• Seed Mat – Some seeds need more heat in order to properly germinate. Peppers, for example, want soil temperatures in the 70°F – 80°F range before they’ll even think about popping up. The seed mat provides heat under the seed tray for happy little seedlings.
• Dibble – A dibble makes the perfect-sized hole for dropping seeds into holes. Get one with measurements included so you can quickly see how deep your holes are as you’re making them.

Top Gardening Tools for Planting Seeds

These are the right gardening tools for direct sowing seeds into your garden beds.

• Seeding Square – This is such a handy tool that takes the guess-work out of measuring for proper spacing. It works really well for the Square Foot Gardening Method, or intensively planting your vegetable garden.
• Yard Stick – Go to your local big box store, and find yard sticks near the paint department. They’re super cheap but super helpful when you’re trying to measure between rows or actual planting spots.

Top Gardening Tools For Watering

Obviously watering your plants is absolutely necessary. Having these top gardening tools for watering your garden will take out a lot of work.

• Misting Sprayer – A quart-sized hand-held sprayer is great for keeping your seed pots moistened during germination. This useful tool helps keep gardeners from blasting their plant babies with too much water pressure.
• Garden Hose – Of course the garden will need a garden hose, but I just want to make sure that you get a good quality hose. Don’t skimp out for cheap. Purchase the longest, strongest garden hose that you can afford. I promise; you won’t be sorry.
• Hose Nozzle – This is one of those new tools that I have to purchase almost every year. I recommend getting one with multiple settings to release water in different patterns at different pressures.
• Watering Wand – This is the best way to help you water your hanging baskets, window boxes, or vertical planters.
• Soaker Hose – I have a love / hate relationship with the soaker hose. I love them when they work. some plants seem to really excel with soaker hoses, such as strawberries. However, I have a hard time keeping them in good shape. Our Florida sun seems to wear them down rather quickly. If you choose to use soaker hoses in your garden, perhaps they’ll last longer if placed under a layer of mulch.
• Overhead Sprinkler – When time fails me, the overhead sprinkler saves the garden. Turn it on, leave it while handling other chores, and revisit it when you remember to turn it off. You can also install a timer to shut off the water for you.

Top Gardening Tools for Pest Control

Besides the best organic measures for natural pest control, it is a good idea to keep these on hand for a healthy garden.

• Sprayer – Every year, I spend $10 on a new one gallon sprayer. I use this for all kinds of foliar sprays, but mostly those needed for pest control. Here’s a pro tip: make sure that you clean it out after each use. Materials break down when left in the sprayer, and they become inactive anyways. Just dump it and clean it. Oils will gunk up the nozzle to the point it becomes ineffective at spraying.
• Black Light – At first glance, this doesn’t seem like it belongs on the list of top gardening tools, but don’t be fooled. The black light is my favorite way to find tomato horn worms because they glow in the dark under the black light. Hunting horn worms at night has become a family tradition each summer.

Top Gardening Tools for Trellising

These top gardening tools for trellising plants will help you go a long way in your garden success this year.

• Cattle Panels – I can’t say enough about using cattle panels, or hog panels, or whatever like item you can source for trellising. We use them for rows of tomatoes or in raised beds of cucumbers. We arch them between two beds so that a beans can grow over them and cascade down beneath. They’re easy to relocate to different parts of the garden each season if needed.
• T posts – We use T posts to secure the cattle panels. Additionally, you can find extra long T posts to securing single tomato plants to.
• Twine – We always seem to have extra baling twine laying around the homestead. It comes in handy as a cost effective way to tie up plants.
• Tomato Cages – I’ve yet to see a tomato cage that actually lasts for a season to effectively support a tomato plant. Perhaps using them in compact, patio varieties will work, but I’m typically growing indeterminate plants that just keep growing. Alternatively, using the tomato cage to support peppers, squash, and zucchini works really well.
• Clips – Tomato clips will help you tie up many different kinds of plant to the trellis of your choice. If you purchase a quality clip, you can use them season after season.

Top Gardening Tools for the Harvest

Check out these fun ways to bring in the harvest from your bountiful garden.

• Baskets – My favorite baskets are those scrounged from thrift shops and yard sales. I scored a whole stack of bushel and peck type baskets last year. You don’t need fancy, you just need it to work.
• Gathering Apron – I love to use a gathering apron for picking a large quantity of small items, such as green beans. Using an apron keeps your hands free from holding a basket or bucket, allowing you to finish harvesting faster.
• Finger knife – In full transparency, I have to say that I’ve never used one of these, but I think they look like one of the most useful garden tools. A finger knife fits on your finger, and you can easily cut from your vegetable or flower garden quickly.

Top Gardening Tools For Cleaning Up

Nobody likes the job of cleaning the garden, but everyone likes the clean slate it brings. I highly recommend keeping a trash bin nearby (or in) your garden space for garbage. Other than that, these are my go-to-tools for cleaning up the garden.

• Mower – That’s right. My garden is large, and using a push lawn mower has helped me to keep weeds and grass down. The walkways between raised beds and the space beneath my blackberry bushes especially benefit from the mower. Also, I like to mow yard grass or dead leaves for composting or mulching the garden beds.
• Tiller – I love the no-till approach to gardening. I’ve seen it work wonders in my raised beds. However, my in ground spaces were over run with bermuda grass last year. I couldn’t win the battle. As I spent countless hours bent over, toiling to remove more and more grass roots and rhizomes, I realized that I was actually hand-tilling the beds to remove the grass. That’s when I gave up my dogmatic approach, and I bought a small tiller. It has already saved me many hours of back-breaking work.

Extras

These are my go-to tools that I can’t live without in my garden, but they don’t really fit in a category.

For the Gardener

• 5-Gallon Buckets – Every homestead needs many of these wonderfully simple tools. Use them to carry a lot of garden tools, mix amendments, carry harvests, fill with weeds, and so much more. You can even plant in your 5-gallon buckets. The possibilities are endless.
• Pair of Gloves – I often don’t wear gloves in the garden, but after several days of hard work, my hands wish that I had worn them. I like to get cheap gloves that I can toss in the washer. I also insist on work gloves for those bigger projects, like repairing the garden fence, or moving cattle panel trellising. They have saved my hands from many cuts and pinches in the past.
• Kneeling Cushion or Knee Pads – Professionals use knee pads. I have the sensory issue of everything bothering me, so I can’t handle strapping those things to my sweaty legs, even if they do make garden work easier. I do like to use a cushion to kneel down on though. If you are like me, get yourself a waterproof cushion.

For the Garden

• Landscape Fabric and Staples – I’m currently using landscape fabric in the walkways between my in ground beds, to help keep the weeds and grass at a minimum. You could use also use fabric to lay on beds, burn holes, and plant in the holes. You will need to secure the sides with staples or sandbags.
• Tarps – My most common use of tarps in the garden is to smother out weeds in garden beds over an extended period of time. Use them to set up temporary shade if needed too.
• Wheel Barrow or Wagon – Choosing something to do the carrying of the heavy stuff is just smart. Whether it be a simple wagon to carry young plants, or a garden cart to bring in big harvests of potatoes, you will find that you need something large for heavy lifting.

• Row Cover – I like row cover as a means of providing shade when needed and for keeping out pests from certain crops. I don’t always use it, but when I do, I’m sure glad to have it on hand.

• Extra Pots – Always keep extra empty pots in all sizes. You never know when you’ll find a surprise volunteer plant that you’d like to save. They are nice to have on hand for propagating plants too.

Summary

Have our recommendations of the top gardening tools helped you? I sure hope so. This comprehensive list of items are actually the things that we use over and over again, season after season. Don’t worry about it if you don’t have everything. You’ll build up your gardening toolbox just like you’re building your homesteading skills. Slowly but surely. Just get out there and green up those thumbs.

Happy Gardening!

Donna and her family have been homesteading for most of their 20+  years together in some shape or fashion. She currently lives on their 20 acre farm where they grow as much food as possible. What started as a just a few laying hens, has grown into large gardens, pastured poultry, pork, and lamb. They are continuously evolving their small farm to not suit their family’s needs, but also providing to their local community. Donna’s favorite part of the family farm is her self-built micro-dairy, where she gets to love on dairy cows while serving her local community. Milking, cheesemaking, and processing dairy have become the soul of their homestead and the center of their farm.