Perhaps it's time to give yourself or a loved one a truly durable tool? Have you found yourself digging in the garden only to notice your trowel is bent? After rigorous farm testing we choose to bring most of our hand tools in from Red Pig based in Oregon. They have been designing, making, and selling the highest quality forged garden tools since 1989. These tools are forged in heat, hammered and shaped mainly by hand at the anvil, and then sharpened and coated with a clear enamel. They use only American hickory handles, turned in the southeastern United States.
Interestingly, in gathering all the feedback on the tools from our Farm Team, we found that each team member had a different favorite tool. Everyone works a little differently, has a different body and a different approach, so we will share with you the tools that made it to the top of the list for our entire team.
#1 Hand Hoe, Hand Forged (by Redpig)
This one is our Farm Manager’s favorite! Kendall uses the hand hoe for just about everything and is especially great to tuck the sharpened edge under weeds or grasses to pull them out of the ground, roots and all. The edge is sharp enough to cut through sod.
#2 Cape Cod Weeder, Hand Forged (by Redpig)
Our Seed Farmer Max likes to use this tool in narrow areas for fine tuning and scuffling. It’s agile enough to get close to the plant and avoid causing damage to irrigation. This is a knife-like tool used to slice weeds and loosen impacted soil.
#3 Nejiri Gama Hoe, (by Bridgetown)
The Nejiri Gama Hoe is a versatile Japanese hoe. Our Seed Farmer Treasure uses the narrow edge to clean weeds from crevices and scuffle along the soil surface cutting off tiny weed seedlings. The rounded edge helps get close into the base of your plants. The pointy end digs seed trenches, aerates soil, and breaks up chunks of soil. Great to use for weed clearing in newly planted beds that have not been mulched yet.
Not only are these lightweight nimble pruners ideal for cut flower harvesting and bouquet arranging, we use them in garlic cleaning as well. Trimming garlic with a pair of heavy duty shears can quickly tire out the hands, that’s why we prefer these all metal pruners. Our farm team also uses these for harvesting to save seeds from flower heads like Sunflowers, Cosmos, Cleome, Salvia and Basil.
#5 Metal Plant Label Stakes (and the Fade Proof Garden Marker)
As you can imagine, it’s super important for us to keep track of what we planted where, and it might be important to you as well. We like these metal stakes and the fade proof markers so we can keep track of our varieties from growing season start to finish.
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