Choose Long-Handled Garden Tools for Easier Garden Care

By Brook Elliott
Published on June 29, 2020
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Left to right: Corona mattock/fork from A.M. Leonard; stirrup hoe and circle hoe from Peaceful Valley; and triangle hoe from Lady Gardener.
Left to right: Corona mattock/fork from A.M. Leonard; stirrup hoe and circle hoe from Peaceful Valley; and triangle hoe from Lady Gardener.
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Garden Tools of Maine - trowel and wire rake.
Garden Tools of Maine - trowel and wire rake.
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The Rogue hoe from Prohoe.
The Rogue hoe from Prohoe.
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Traditional Japanese tools from Hida Tool Co. (left to right): Window hoe; V-shaped scraper and three-tined cultivator.
Traditional Japanese tools from Hida Tool Co. (left to right): Window hoe; V-shaped scraper and three-tined cultivator.

Whatever their shape or purpose, garden tools extend some part of your body and multiply the strength applied. For instance, if you squeeze your fingers together and cup your hand slightly, you have formed a spade to dig and scrape. Forge that spade from stone or metal and you can move much more dirt with the same effort. Put a handle on it, and you leverage that effort several fold. By this point, you have a trowel.

Unfortunately, the handles on most trowels — and on most gardening tools intended for one-handed use — are woefully short. You wind up doing the work instead of the tool doing it for you. I recently witnessed this inefficiency in person, watching a neighbor plant a bed of flower bulbs. For each bulb, he had to forcefully stab the trowel blade into the earth, then twist it several times to create a hole for the bulb. The poor guy was breaking a sweat planting flowers! A long-handled gardening tool would have made the job a snap.

One-handed gardening tools (as opposed to those, like a shovel, that require two hands to operate) fall into five categories: digging blades (trowels); cutting and scraping blades (hoes and weeders); forks and cultivators; rakes; and multipurpose tools that combine two or more functions. Sometimes the standard six- or seven-inch handle is sufficient for the job at hand, but a longer handle is often preferable. Long-handled tools range in length from about 10 to 24 inches; anything more than 32 inches long is difficult to use with one hand.

The Many Advantages of Long-Handled Tools

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