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Gardening Tool Maintenance and Storage - What do you do?

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  • AuntyRachAuntyRach Posts: 5,291
    Hey nothing wrong with a trug! Mine isn’t a traditional one but more of a wooden box with a carry handle. Prior to that the daily stuff was housed in a bucket at the end of the day. Pockets aren’t ideal in case you stab yourself with sharp/pointy thing when you bend (ask me how I know). I do have an short gardening apron with pockets, which is ok, but same issue with bending over. 

    The pointy stick (usually a small skewer type one) is good for scraping bits out of secateurs and a larger wood or metal one for gouging weeds and making small planting holes for seedlings etc. 
    My garden and I live in South Wales. 
  • chickychicky Posts: 10,410
    @Meomye I use the Felco sharpener, and also found YouTube videos very helpful.  I also remember a Monty tip, where he marked the bevelled edge of the blade with a black felt pen so you could see where you’d sharpened.  I don’t do that anymore, but it helped we when I first started.  I do little and often (nearly every time they come out they get a little sharpen first).

    I have a Crean mate for scrubbing metal tools clean, but they only get that treatment a couple of times a year 😀


  • Songbird-2Songbird-2 Posts: 2,349
    @Topbird, I really like the look of that sharpening tool that you use. I just can't seem to get to grips using a stone and oil, I've tried and failed. So, thanks for that link, I'm going to order one.🙂
  • tui34tui34 Posts: 3,493
    I am very twee @Bédé !!  I use a trug!  It's like the pocket of my apron which I wear as well in the garden along with my gloves.  If you dig deep enough you will find what you are looking for!!
    A good hoeing is worth two waterings.

  • TopbirdTopbird Posts: 8,355
    @nutcutlet - 🤣 - you muppet😁. Hope everything's good with you😎

    @bede - my garden trug ain't at all ladylike! It's not one of those £40+ handmade-in-Sussex (wherever) wooden ones - it's a cheap, plastic, workman's tool holder from B&Q. One large compartment and two smaller ones to keep things a bit organised (for a few days at least). Deep enough to get lots of small tools and 'bits' in (and things don't fall out) - but nowhere near as deep as a bucket where small things just fall to the bottom never to be seen again - at least not until you trip over said bucket and send everything flying....

    Many of the things I wear for gardening in summer don't have pockets. Even if they did, I wouldn't put sharp or pointy things in them. I don't wear a belt when gardening (gives me heartburn when I bend over) so belt attachments are a non-starter.

    A workman's trug is an essential part of my kit.
    Heaven is ... sitting in the garden with a G&T and a cat while watching the sun go down
  • nutcutletnutcutlet Posts: 27,445
    All good here @Topbird and hope the same with you. All tools safe right now, Shredder in the workshop having open-heart surgery. You can also destroy a trowel with a Flymo mower.


    In the sticks near Peterborough
  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,090
    In Belgium I had pots and baskets of pelargoniums at the sunny front of the house.  One late summer's day I asked Possum to dead head them all and tip the stalks on the compost.  She did, along with the secateurs!

    OH found them 6 months later when turning the heaps and very sorry for themselves.  I took them to the Felco stand at Chelsea and chappy said it wa sthe worst case he'd ever seen.  Nonetheless, they were duly returned to me cleaned, sharpened and in full working order.   They will do this for any pair in mainland UK so I had to have them posted to a friend who brought them when she came to visit.  
    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    edited February 2023
    When I was a bit more wussy, I used to use chopsticks to pick up snails and slugs 
    And for tipping stag beetles back on their feet. We had a cat that liked to tip them over and watch the legs wiggling. Sadly no more stag beetles some a***hole removed their tree stump for no reason I could tell.
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • Slow-wormSlow-worm Posts: 1,630
    @B3 oh no! Poor beetles - I've seen one stag in decades, yet rummaging for creatures as kids we used to see quite a lot more.
    As for slug picking, I used to get lathered in their goo, it would take about 5 hand washes to get rid of it, but since a few years ago I seem immune - thankfully, lol, especially seeing as I pick the buggers every night in summer. 😄

    My 'trug' is a bucket, tools go in, weeds, water, soil, plants, nails, snails.. everything. 
    I wouldn't berate anyone for using a trug though, that would be really pointless.
  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,090
    I have a tool box - plastic, two troughs with a handle between - which I used to use for carrying garden tools but we now have one set of tools in the polytunnel for the veg plot and another in the shed for the rest of the garden so the tool box is now a tool box again - screwdrivers, spanners etc.

    I use those big plastic malleable buckets with handles as trugs for holding compost mixes, pulled weeds, saving small treasures to pot on and even water for soaking pots before planting.   Anyone who dismisses trugs as twee just lacks imagination.
    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
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