Whether you’re new to gardening or you’ve been at it for a while, the right tools make all the difference. You want to make sure you’re using the right tool for each task, and you want tools that are going to last for a very long time.
Tools for Sustainable Gardening
For the last of the tomatoes, use clippers to remove them from the vines. This helps protect the plant and also comes in handy for getting off the tomatoes that grow in clusters. I like to use these ARS Small Hand Shears for cutting herbs too.
It’s time to get your fall vegetables into the ground. For broccoli and cabbage, I recommend that you use starter plants. You’ll need a handheld trowel to get these in the ground. This one with a gel grip is comfortable to use, durable, and the polished aluminum keeps soil from sticking.
When it’s time to harvest that broccoli and cabbage, a knife will come in handy for cutting through the broccoli stalks and cabbage heads. I have this soil knife, which has been useful not only for harvesting these fall vegetables but also for plenty of other garden chores like dividing perennials and digging out rocks and debris.
For sweet potatoes, parsnips and other root vegetables, the best way to get them out without d
amaging them is using a digging fork. Locate the crown of the plant you want to dig up and, with your digging fork, loosen the soil around the plant, creating a circle about 18 inches in diameter. Then you can pull up the sweet potatoes or parsnips by the crown.
I like to keep my Garden Glide handy, especially during harvest season. All those cabbages, sweet potatoes, and broccoli really start to get heavy to lug around! Whether I need to haul soil, fertilizer, and tools to the garden or all my produce back from the garden, pulling it all around on the Garden Glide makes all these chores much easier.