Joan Wilen and Lydia Wilen
Joan Wilen and Lydia Wilen are folk-remedy experts and home tipsters based in New York City. They have spent decades collecting “cures from the cupboard” and are authors of several books, including Secret Food Cures.
Gardening requires more than just your hands. It requires an array of tools. Without proper garden tool maintenance and care these tools won’t function as well, and eventually they will break. Leaving you without the tool you need, most likely when you need it most and can’t find a replacement for it.
In this excerpt from the book Household Magic by Joan and Lydia Wilen the authors discuss tips for garden tool maintenance and care.
Garden tools date back thousands of years. We heard it through the grapevine that the first woody plant—which actually was a grapevine in Armenia—was pruned by man around 6000 BC. (We can only imagine the crude pruning shears used then!) Spades made of bronze were used in China in 1100 BC, and the ancient Romans used iron spades and shovels.
Fast-forward to the middle of the 14th century when, thanks to iron-smelting technology, tools were made lighter in weight and more shapely. Then take another leap forward to the mid-17th century when gardens became the rage, and gardeners wanted to be well-equipped to both plant and prune. The industrial revolution had begun, and steel and alloys were used to make tools lighter, more precisely shaped and more durable.
Enterprising manufacturers met the needs of gardeners with a wide range of tools—including pruning and hedge shears, cultivating forks and trowels…just about every nonmechanical gardening tool that is still used today.
We bet you never thought that your gardening tools had their roots in the 14th or 17th centuries. Also, we bet you can find some helpful tips on organizing and caring for those tools if you’ll just keep reading.
◆ Make room on your garage or shed wall to hang a clear-plastic shoe bag—the kind that has 12 or 16 or more shoe compartments. It’s a great way to keep your gardening tools and gloves in one convenient place.
◆ Tired of misplacing your tools while you work in the garden? Get some bright, fluorescent (meaning, day-glo colors) spray paint or tape, and put some on the handles of your garden tools.
If you tend to garden after sundown, add strips of glow-in-the-dark tape (available at hardware stores and most crafts stores) to the tools’ handles. The time you’ve saved looking for the implements will be extra time spent gardening.
NOTE: If you take your cell phone outside with you to the garden, add a piece of day-glo tape to it so you can find it quickly.
◆ Use an old golf bag to store rakes, spades and hoes. You can get an inexpensive bag at a yard sale or a second-hand sporting goods store. When you decide to use your garden tools, is there any better way to drag them around than in a golf bag? Well, yes…have your caddy drag them around.
When planting and harvesting, a ruler often comes in handy—to calculate distances when planting seeds or bulbs…or to measure how deep seeds should be planted…or at what height they should be harvested.
So, turn the handles of your tall tools into rulers. Account for the number of inches from the tip of the tool to the start of the handle and, at the start of the handle, mark off and number each inch with a waterproof pen. Measure each of your small tools as well, and assign it a number for its length in inches
Use colorful poker chips to mark the measured spots where you plan to plant.
◆ Pour some dry sand into a big bucket until it’s about 3⁄4 full. Then pour motor oil…or machine oil…or mineral oil…or even used cooking oil…evenly over the top. For every gallon of sand, use about one pint of oil.
To clean a rusty tool, stick it in the sand several times, then wipe it with a soft cloth or paper towel. The sand cleans the tool…the oil coats it and prevents moisture from rusting the metal.
You may want to store your tools in the bucket just for the night, but you can even keep ’em there for the winter.
◆ If you keep your garden tools in a toolbox, toss in moisture absorbers, such as some loose rice…or activated charcoal…or pieces of chalk …or mothballs. Doing so will help prevent your tools from developing rust. Also, make sure that your tools are clean and not caked with soil before storing them.
Tool Case and Seat, All in One
Put a large plastic bag in a big (five-gallon) plastic bucket. Then fill the bag (and the buck[1]et) with your tools, gloves, bulbs, seeds, bottle of drinking water and cell phone, and take the bucket to the garden.
Once you’ve reached the patch of garden you plan on tending, empty the contents of the plastic bag onto the ground. Then turn the bucket over, have a seat and get to work.
◆ If you’ve had sick plants, your garden tools may be infected with the plants’ disease. Kill the problematic bacteria by thoroughly washing the tools with soap and warm water. Wear rubber gloves while doing this task.
NOTE: Don’t forget to wash your gloves, gardening shoes and any other clothes that may have had contact with the ailing plants.
◆ If you want to use something stronger than soap and water to sanitize your tools, soak them in one gallon of water mixed with 3 ⁄4 cup of bleach. Rinse the tools thoroughly with plain water before using them again.
Make Your Own Scooper
Take an empty plastic detergent bottle…or a bleach bottle…or plastic vinegar container…or spring water bottle—the size depends on how big or small you want the scooper to be—and thoroughly wash it out with plain soap and water.
Then, with the handle in your left hand, use regular kitchen scissors to cut from the bottom of the right side of the bottle. Cut in a diagonal to the left side about one inch under the han[1]dle and go around to the other side, and then diagonally down to the bottom. (Cut in the op[1]posite direction if you’re left-handed.)
It may sound complicated, but when you follow these instructions, you’ll see exactly how easy it is to create a terrific scooper that can be used to scoop seeds, fertilizer, mulch…and whatever else needs scooping.
◆ Do not store a hose where the sun will shine down on it. The sun’s heat will dry it out. Also, keep a hose away from any kind of heating source, like a furnace or outdoor barbecue.
◆ If the hose has sprung a little leak, instead of using glue or tape to repair it, try this fix— heat up the tip of an ice pick or Phillips-head screwdriver, and gently touch the rubber around the hole in the hose with the hot tip of the tool. It should seal the hole closed.
Used Hose Uses
If your garden hose has sprung several leaks and is beyond repair, you can recycle it by poking more holes into it and turning it into a sprinkler (also called a “soaker hose”) for your lawn or garden.
You can also cut up an old hose and use it to brace newly planted trees—it will protect their bark.
To learn more gardening tips check out Household Magic from Bottomlineinc.com.
