Favorite Non-Gardening Tool

What is your favorite tool to use in the garden that was not made for gardening?

Mine is a bread knife. It's great for getting pot bound plants out of their pot, just slip it down the side of the pot in a few places and saw away around the inside and the plant will come right out. Good for sawing through tough vines in hard to reach places. I also use it to remove sod. Just saw horizontally, about an inch under the grass.

X

Mine is an old fashion ice pick with a wooden handle. Great to use as as awl for punching drainage holes in make-shift pots and for aerating compacted soil around plants.

LOL, I have a great pair of kitchen scissors that have migrated to my potting table. The are small, super sharp with a very pointy end and can cut like a ginzu knife. I use them for poking holes in cups for seedlings, the odd bit of pruning and deadheading, harvesting vegetables and flowers.... Actually I use them more than my pruners.

I bought a combination plastic tool box/stool from a hardware store. It holds my gardening tools and has a removable tray on the inside with a built-in handle, which I carry around with me. I wouldn't be without it in the garden. I especially like the idea of it also being a stool. This way I can sit instead of kneel for many jobs.

This message was edited Jan 26, 2008 1:40 PM

This message was edited Jan 26, 2008 1:42 PM

I'm with X, just couldn't garden without a bread knife. It is great for dividing overgrown pots of ferns and cutting those occasional stubborn roots that need to be severed.
In my heavy, woody soil I have also been known to use an electric riciprocating saw to cut tree roots when planting outdoors.

Well Ardesia I confess to using an electric knife to remove sod to make a new bed .. works incredibly well!

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=3537861

X

Food processor LOL

There is another "tool" I use too .. I take those cheap "Always" panty liners, throw about 5 of them in 2 gallons of water .. in a few hours they will swell up like sausages. I then cut the tip off one and squeeze out this jelly like stuff and mix it with potting soil and put that in the bottom of a pot I will be planting, then the plant. It works just as well as those expensive water retaining crystals you can buy.

I've also heard of lining hanging baskets with disposable baby diapers for the same affect.

X

Scissors, a kitchen knife, fork and spoon. Also an old butcher knife for dandilions. I just bought a pale green skein of baby yarn to tie plants up with.

X, you're a genius ... such ingenuity!

Well Since my place is large the best tool I own is my golf cart that is my rolling tool box. Add my little Jon Deere dumping trailer and I am all set for any chore.

I love my ginsu knife. It cuts through the toughest rootball like butter.

lol @ panty liners. I use disposable baby diapers in the bottoms of my window boxes. They keep the window boxes moist in our hot summer days.

lavender,

Do the diapers keep your windowboxes from draining?

The still drain some but the diapers keep them moist in our scorching summers. Sometimes our summers are so brutal the window boxes dry out in just a couple hours without them. I probably wouldn't do it if I lived in a cooler climate.

A butcher knife a pair of long nose pliers and a comfy deck chair.

My Husband :) he has the msucles to do all the hard work :) oh, and a Steak Knife

Plastic Spoons
Popsicle Sticks to label pots
Christmas Lights for bottom heating plants
Desk Lamps for keeping seedling warm

I use tons of "non-gardening" items! Improvision is half the fun!

wow, old christmas lights! thats a great idea!

What do you you use to write on your popsicle sticks? I use them to and have tried pencil, ball point pen, magic marker and even sprayed them with clear spray paint but they are only good for about month then the writing starts to run/fade.

X

I use fine tip magic markers.

I've tried those too .. they don't last for me. I ended up making markers out of aluminum foil that you can emboss with a ball point pen. They seem to be holding up very well .. even if they are buried in dirt.

X

I use Decor paint pens now but haven't used them long enough to know if they hold up longer than a year.
Buried in the dirt sounds like a good way to keep markers with the plants for a long time. How do you make the aluminum foil markers, X?

Here's the link .. i made a tutorial .. lol

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/703648/

X

Thank you! About the punch hole, what goes in the hole?

I put a twist tie thru it to attach to plants.

X

Brillant! That's probably the best tip for tagging plants I've heard of. I've got EON markers, but the sun fades the ink, the labels peel off and to top that off, my dog pulls the markers out of the ground. I wish I had read this before I committed to the eon coop. You can bet I'm making some of these aluminium tags. Wow! Isn't it fun to learn new tricks!