Gardening Tools for Beginners: The 6 You Need and What to Skip

The gardening tools for beginners with a pot garden come to six: a hand trowel or khurpi, a pair of secateurs or strong scissors, a watering can with a rose, a spray bottle, gloves and a bucket. That is the whole kit. Everything else in the garden shop is either for people with flower beds and lawns or something your kitchen drawer already owns. Below: what each does, its kitchen stand in, what to skip, and how to keep blades clean.

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What tools do I need for gardening in pots?

Six, and you may own four already. Here is each one, in the order you will reach for it on the first day.

1. Hand trowel or khurpi. A trowel is a small scoop with a handle; a khurpi is the flat, short bladed desi tool that malis use while squatting. Either one fills pots, breaks the crust on top of the soil and lifts a seedling with its root ball whole. Buy one, not both. Pick one whose blade and neck are a single piece of metal; a thin welded neck bends the first time it meets hard soil.
2. Secateurs or strong scissors. For herbs, leafy greens and soft stems, sharp kitchen scissors do everything. Secateurs (spring loaded pruning cutters) earn their place only once you have woody plants such as curry leaf, lemon, rose or a three year old tulsi.
3. Watering can with a rose. The rose is the sprinkler head with many tiny holes. It breaks one heavy stream into soft rain.
4. Spray bottle. A fine mist keeps a seed tray damp without shifting the seeds, and a firm jet of plain water knocks aphids off the underside of a leaf.
5. Gloves. One pair that fits closely. More on whether you truly need them below.
6. Bucket. It mixes soil, carries water, soaks a dried out pot, holds weeds and prunings, and stores the other five tools when you are done.

If you are still choosing plants, the balcony herb garden guide lists eight easy pots to start with, and none of them needs more than this kit.

Why does the watering can need a rose?

Because a small pot is easy to wreck with a mug of water. Pour straight from a jug and the stream digs a crater, floats seeds to the rim, exposes fine roots and splashes soil onto the leaves, which is how a lot of leaf disease begins.

Size matters more than looks. For up to ten pots, a 1.5 to 2 litre can with a long spout reaches the back row without you leaning over the front one. How much water each pot actually wants is a separate skill, covered in how often to water potted plants in summer and winter.

Which kitchen items can stand in for garden tools?

Nearly all of them, at least for the first season.

Did you know? A plain kitchen fork is one of the best transplanting tools there is. Slide it under a seedling, lift, and the roots come up with their soil attached.

Old tins, tubs and paint buckets also make fine pots once they have holes in the base. The budget balcony garden guide shows which containers are safe for food plants and which are not.

What is a waste of money for a pot garden?

Most of the shelf, honestly.

• Spades, rakes, hoes and garden forks. They are made for ground, not for a 12 inch pot.
• Ten piece tool sets in a carry bag. You will use two pieces. The rest rust.
• A hose pipe and spray gun for fewer than thirty pots. It wastes water and blasts soil out of small containers.
• Cheap soil pH and moisture meters. A finger pushed 2 to 3 cm into the soil tells you more.

Spend what you save on better soil; the recipe is in the potting mix ratio guide.

Do I need gardening gloves?

For watering and harvesting, no. For soil, compost, manure and thorny plants, yes. Soil and compost carry germs that are harmless on whole skin and unwelcome in a cut.

Thin, tight gloves with a rubber coated palm are the most useful kind, since you can still feel a seedling through them. Shake them out before wearing. Always.

How do I clean blades between plants?

Beginners skip this. Sap, soil and fungus ride from plant to plant on scissors, so a single cut through a diseased stem can carry the problem to every pot you trim that afternoon.

1. Healthy plants first. Trim the sick one last, always.
2. Wipe between plants. A rag dampened with soapy water takes off sap and soil.
3. After any diseased plant, wash the blades with dish soap and hot water, then wipe them with surgical spirit or a hand sanitiser that contains alcohol and let them air dry.
4. Dry fully. Wet steel rusts overnight in the monsoon.
5. Oil lightly. One drop of cooking oil rubbed along the blade and into the joint keeps scissors moving smoothly.

Where should I store garden tools?

Dry, shaded and off the floor. Sun makes plastic brittle and damp rusts steel, so a hook under a shelf, or the bucket turned on its side, works well. Empty the watering can and bucket after each use. Water left standing for days in either is a breeding spot for the dengue mosquito, which needs very little of it.

In the coastal humidity of Karachi or Mumbai rust arrives faster, so the drying and the drop of oil stop being optional, while in hill towns the enemy is frost: empty every can on freezing nights, because ice splits plastic.

Beginner tool questions people ask

Once the kit is ready, the month by month sowing calendar tells you what to put in the pots this season. More low cost growing ideas sit in Zero-Waste Kitchen.