UTTER ROT Part 16 Special Mens stuff. Basic, essential equipment. Batterie de jardinage. The first thing about men and gardening is that if they are to engage in such a domestic activity there must be some drawcard that will attract their masculine weaknesses. This is an elementary rule of marketing. In this case the draw will be boys toys, those mechanical and electrical power gadgets that fascinate most men. Anything that makes noise and smoke, and makes yard work easier is a huge attraction for most males. Consider the possibilities: ‘Gators’, chain-saws, leaf blowers, garden vacuums, electric hedge clippers, cement mixer, post hole digger, trencher, power spray kit, ride-on mowers, mowers, mini-tractors and numerous attachments from scraper-blades to snow ploughs. For the ultimate collection of such toys a necessary enhancement will be a shed. Indeed, there is one at ‘Carrick Hill’ in South Australia. Ostensibly an art gallery in a heritage house the ‘men’s shed’ there houses a huge collection of garden tools and equipment, over 750 of them: a specific attraction for men. Why not make it your reference collection? But I am getting ahead of myself here. What is needed for beginning a garden is a beginners kit, the basic essentials. These would have to include: • A pair of good quality secateurs of which there are three kinds, those with anvil cut blades, by-pass blades and geared kinds which are designed to reduce fatigue in the hands and fingers. There are those who prefer one kind over the other. My choice would be for a pair of geared secateurs with by-pass blades. Whatever kind you go for expect to pay around $50 for a pair with high quality steel blades and solid construction. • A stainless steel digging fork, more costly but so long lasting and easy to clean, and rust proof. • A stainless steel spade. • A ‘donkey’ – a kind of large throw sheet on which piles of prunings, clippings etc. can be tossed and then carried to the compost heap or green bin. • A wheel-barrow with pneumatic tyre-wheel. • A pair of long handled branch loppers. • A double action pruning saw that cuts in both directions when sawing. • A stainless steel hand fork. • A broad bladed stainless steel hand trowel. • A narrow bladed stainless steel hand trowel. • A very narrow bladed stainless steel hand trowel. • Leather gardening gloves. • Balls of twine and string. • Galvanised bucket. • Leaf rake with round steel tines/ prongs. • Pair of hand rakes. • Bamboo garden stakes in assorted sizes. That should see any new gardener well set up to make a good beginning. It is possible, of course, to buy very cheap gardening tools, especially the hand-held kinds. But they are, as a rule, short lived and not economical after breaking or bending and being replaced three or four times. Stainless steel tools do cost more but my recommendation is that they be given serious thought. There is nothing so grating to a gardener to find that in mid-task a hand tool bends or snaps. Discounting plastic tools altogether the cheaper ‘steel’ tools are just not up to the tasks gardeners expect them to do. Welded joins come apart, thin gauge metal bends too easily, riveted joints pop and break, ‘necks’ bend or snap –or both, handles break up. Ggggrrrrrrr. Talk about crime in Italy, the makers of cheap garden tools are worse crooks. In contrast properly made stainless steel tools are hand forged on an anvil from one piece of steel. They just do not bend or break; there are no lap seams or joints to come apart under heavy working conditions; they just do not break and cannot be broken. Top stuff discovered after 30 years of buying cheap junk. It is no coincidence that tools of this quality are manufactured in the Netherlands, the home of horticulture. Google: ‘de Witt’, ‘Sneeboer’. Why the clumsy French? By this time in your gardening education it is as well to know that not everything worth knowing about the subject derive from England. The French have been at it for centuries too, and still do it rather well, as do the Italians and the Dutch and the Germans; most Europeans in fact.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 23:10:09 +0000
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