Did you ever think of your hands as tools? Of course you have. In the garden your hands can work marvelously well. Do you love the feel of pushing your 

hands into good, friable soil? I am sure you do. I know I do. Beginning gardeners can get along with their hands and maybe a hoe.

As you learn how to help your soil regenerate itself after a season of growing, you will likely start to expand that initial small garden area. How big your garden becomes is, of course, a function of your time, strength and the size of your pocketbook. 

Here are some basic garden tools you will likely start to employ:

1. Gloves - Garden gloves are almost a necessity. Your hands are doing many things in your garden from digging into the dirt to pounding steel stakes with a sledge hammer. If your hands have ever met a thorn you will probably not garden without garden gloves again. Rose bushes are famous for their art of persuasion in this regard. Gloves will also ward off blisters and keeping the juice of certain plants and flowers from getting on your skin. Rashes and itching can result if that happens. 

2. Garden Fork - Beginning gardeners can certainly find some excellent uses for a hardy fork to turn some soil where weeds and grass have taken hold. Garden forks will work on hard, dry soils when a hoe or shovel has trouble.

3. Garden Trowel - This tool is small and used successfully in garden containers and small garden beds. After you pick up some bags of soil additives a garden trowel is a nice tool to have to take the product out of the bag and spread it on your soil. Use it in the garden for seedling plants too.

4. Watering Can - A proficient gardener once told me that we never grasp how much water our gardens need. Sometimes they get very thirsty, indeed! I do not recommend a watering can for anything larger than a flower pot. Why? Because plants grow best if they are watered deeply. It is better to give your plant a lot of water applied once a week than to put a small amount of water around the plant every day. Roots will reach toward the surface if the water does not go down deeply. You want the roots to go as far down as possible.

5. Garden Pruner - When you are really getting down and dirty in your garden, you will need a pruner to trim your plants and roots. They are small and easy to use. I recommend you get a pair as soon as possible. Thank me later.

Other gardening tools you will want to consider include roto-tillers, rakes, wheelbarrows, carts and shovels. There are many types of each one of these tools and they are the content of another article.

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