Our 'Rule of 6' garden tools...

So this isn’t a dull list of 6 must-haves, here’s my list of 6 garden tools that I ‘hate to rate’: 

Caused me to eat my words: the Sneeboer hand hoe. It caused an argument in the otherwise harmonious Tinker and Fix household because I said it’d be rubbish and we shouldn’t bother testing it. Turns out it’s my absolute favourite garden tool this year and I’m one down to Edd in the ‘I told you so sweepstake’.

Tool I use the most and really wished I didn’t: grass shear by Wolf Garten. It’s satisfying to get a clean edge around the lawn, but it just makes me annoyed when I have to do around the veg patch because I’d planned it to be surrounded by lovely old brick pathways. As we’ll not get round to that, the grass shears are used too often.  But they’re cracking: they rotate 90 degrees, are sharp, and aren’t heavy.

That financially doesn’t make sense: the Niwaki Sentei Secateurs. I absolutely love them. They’re great fit to my hand, they work stonkingly. What’s the issue? Well, we also sell the GR Pro’s which are more expensive and I hands-down prefer the Sentei’s as they don’t recoil (our other key garden tester, Liz, prefers them though and she's a pro...)  But, when I’m asked, I always recommend them as my favourite. And each time I do we make less money. Darn those morals.

That I regret buying: Hawes watering cans. Years ago we bought two of them because other watering roses were rubbish and wanted to ‘buy once, buy well’. At the time we couldn’t afford the metal versions. We settled for second best, but still better than all the rest. They are great. After 8 years the roses are only just going. But when I use them, I still really wish they were metal.

That is just wrong to use as it’s too effective: the Opinel folding pruning saw. Turns out we’re hippies because our philosophy is let it all grow free. When I do have to cut things back I hate it – it looks tempered, restricted, wrong. I’ve a particular aversion to cutting trees (perhaps it’s from reading The Lorax). So, if I can’t cut it using the Opinel pruning saw (8cm diameter or less), we ignore it and it stays au natural.

That I don’t understand: the Japanese ‘Hori-Hori’ trowel. How did I garden for so long without one? Unfathomable.