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Float On
3-22-12, 1:02pm
Here's a little challenge (maybe more for myself than anyone else) -
Do you know where all your garden tools and yard tools are?
Are they clean and sharpened and ready for the year?

This includes lawnmowers too!
(Thankfully mine started after cleaning the sparkplug but it could use a sharper blade and probably a tune-up so it won't sputter so much)

How do you care for your lawn/garden tools?
I'm so bad about leaving them where I last used them. We found a rake out in the middle of the woods the other day. I probably leaned it up against a tree while trying to get some new chickens back into the yard last fall.......and there it stayed all winter. :( I need a better system. I don't have a storage shed that I can devote to yard tools - some I toss under the front porch, some are leaning against the back of the studio.

herbgeek
3-22-12, 3:07pm
Cleaned? Sharpened? <slapping forehead> Something else for my to do list! Crap- this board keeps adding things for me to do!

Zoebird
3-22-12, 5:36pm
yes! i own zero tools! they are all ready, then!

iris lily
3-22-12, 9:39pm
oh gee, I'm another one with work to do in this area, great thread!

I've got garden plots at little houses and corresponding multiple stashes of tools but that leads to confusion. I've got 2 pitchforks here at home, but I needed one at off site garden #1 last weekend but it was not there 'cause it was here.

For this reason of multiple sites, I really just try to have these simple tools:

1) shovel
2) a few 5 gallon buckets

at each site

If it is a site that has compost and wood chips, I want

3) pitch fork
4) wheelbarrow

It it is a site that grows tall lilies, I will keep a stash of tall stakes.

There is not much else I use regularly.

DH is in charge of mowing and he only has 2 sites to mow, the rest of our garden plots are purposely without grass.

Tiam
3-22-12, 10:07pm
Oh, I'm awful....just awful...I have the hardest time with any kind of tools, lawn, garden, household, automotive.

jania
3-23-12, 10:02am
I've got my all-purpose shed where the water heater is and that's where I keep my rakes, lawn mower and shovel. Out in the yard I have a table I found in the alley that I now use as a potting/project table and underneath it I have two smaller-sized galvanized trash cans where I keep my hand tools. My yard isn't so big so it's easy for me to look it over before I go inside and check to notice if I've left anything out.

Now, as for sharpening.....Maybe because I live in the desert, but I clean off the mower each time I use it (it's just a non-mechanical push type) and after 8 years the blades are still sharp. The same goes with my shovel. I always see the idea about a can of sand with motor oil in it for lubrication and cleaning and while I like the idea I don't do it.

Mrs-M
3-30-12, 10:23am
I love this thread!

My dad is basically the family lawnmower care guy, taking care of everyone's blade-sharpening needs each year, so our lawnmower is covered off in that area. Re: my gardening tools, I like to wash everything clean after use, and as far as storage goes, I keep my hand-held weeding/gardening tools in a large industrial plastic pail, along with a pair of cotton gardening gloves to keep my hands semi-clean/damage-free.

Pruning tools, get the once going over by DH each spring, readying them for the season ahead.