4 Gardening Items to Ask Santa for this Christmas

Tweet

For many of us, old man winter has moved in, putting a damper on our outdoor vegetable gardening efforts. While many still continue to grow some herbs, lettuce, spinach and other cooler crops in either outdoor cold frames or on indoor window sills, colder weather also means the Christmas season is upon us.

And while, falling snow may not spark an immediate thought of harvesting ripe tomatoes, Christmas is a great time to put some gardening gifts on your want list for Santa. So here are some items you may want to jot down.

Garden Cart/Wheelbarrow
I received a garden cart two years ago. It can carry up to 600 pounds, and the type I have has 4 wheels as opposed to the traditional 1 wheel, wheelbarrow (of which I have one of those also). They vary in cost based on features. They can cost as low as $20 up through $200. Mine is in the $60 to $70 range. It’s great for when I am moving lots of items at one time or moving mounds of compost around.

Pitchfork
Most gardeners have one or even two of these. They are a great help when turning over soil or your compost pile. They are available at any home or garden center for $10 to $40. My dad gave me one of his older ones, and my family gave me a second one as a gift last year. It’s nice to have a backup in case one of them decides to retire (my tools don’t break, they just decide to stop working).

Small Garden Tools
From a basic trowel to a hand cultivator the smaller tools are a must for every gardener. They are small enough to help you work in tight spots but large enough to complete tasks fairly easily. Again these range in price. You can pick them up at your dollar store (although quality is not the greatest) and at your local home or garden center for a few bucks more. Walmart and Target have them, but they will be tough to find at those stores this time of year, so your best bet are places like Tractor Supply, Home Depot and/or Lowes.

Seeds
While I will be the first to plug our Seeds of the Month Club here, I will also say that vegetable seed packets make for great stocking stuffers. Tie a ribbon around a dozen or so packs and put them in the stocking of your family vegetable gardener and they are sure to love the gift. Besides, what is a vegetable gardener without any vegetable seeds?

I could go on for hours as to what could be or should be on your gift list to Santa, but the above list marks the items I get the most use out of in my own vegetable gardening efforts. What would you like to see on your list?

About the Author
Mike Podlesny is the author of Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the rest of us, the moderator for the largest vegetable gardening page on Facebook and creator of the Seeds Club.

Watch the video below to learn more about Mike`s Seeds of the Month Club:

Three Tools the Home Vegetable Gardener Can’t Live Without

When I started vegetable gardening I was a mere seven years old. I would go out and help my dad turn the soil over, plants some seeds, even bury the food waste in the backyard. Of course back then burying food waste was an oddity in society, whereas today it is not only accepted but encouraged. I will get to more on that in a moment.

From the moment I was a young child up until today I learned quickly that there are certain tools I just could not live without to help with the tasks of cultivating my home vegetable garden. These tools make it easier to aerate the soil, mix in compost and other materials, and break up the bigger chunks of dirt.

Let me start with my trusty shovel or spade. My shovel is as basic as it gets. It is a simple shovel with a wooden handle and the spade is made of forged steel. You can buy one similar at any home or garden center, although they probably are made with fiberglass handles today. My shovel allows me to dig deep holes to bury my food waste. I will dig a hole about eighteen inches, dump the food waste in and cover the hole with the dirt. I build up great nutrients in my soil this way and my shovel allows me to get to that depth fairly easily. Why this depth? Because that is where the worms live!

The next tool in my arsenal is the rake. I use a steel rake with strong tines on it. It, too, has a wooden handle but I also own another one that has the fiber glass variety. Someone gave it to me a while back, so I keep it in the shed. My rake gives me the ability to level off the soil after I have dug holes with the shovel. See the paragraph above as to why I would need to do this. My rake keeps my home vegetable garden from looking like it has hills and valleys, which isn’t good for water drainage. Although raised bed experts might disagree.

Finally, what home vegetable garden tool shed would be complete without a pitchfork. A pitchfork looks exactly like how it sounds, like a long fork. They come with either three or four tines. One is not better than the other, but whichever one you do get make sure it is made from forged steel. My pitchfork gives me the ability to turn the soil over without chopping up all of the worms underneath that are working hard to dig tunnels and breakdown the food waste I buried. Because it is made of hard forged steel it is strong enough to break through even the hardest of soils, turn it over and break up clumps of dirt into smaller pieces which I can then use my rake on to smooth out.

Many other tools for the home vegetable gardener exist. From small ones to powered ones and everything in between, many varieties exist, but the three I mentioned above, I believe, are must haves for any person’s home vegetable garden.

About the Author

Mike is the author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person, as well as the president and CEO of Mike the Gardener Enterprises, LLC. You can, follow him on Twitter as well as join his Facebook fan page.