Sunday, February 10

Putting it right

Organized tools make gardening a snap

Have you ever gotten up a head of steam to spend the day in the garden only to lose it because you couldn't find the tools you need for the job? Or come home from the nursery with pretty new plants and pots only to find there's no room on your potting bench to work? How about dropping good money on a certain tool and then discovering you already had one like it buried in a pile of clutter?

If you've found yourself in these or similar situations, it's time to reconsider and reorganize you garden gear. Now this doesn't mean building a new storage shed or pouring lots of money into all kinds of fancy gadgets. All you need is a corner of the garage, part of a mudroom, back porch or even a little shack in the yard - any place that can be dedicated to housing a few gardening essentials. Here are my tips to straighten up your current space and to get things organized for the coming growing season.

Purge
It's the hardest part of the job. Grab a trashcan and start chucking. My rule of thumb: If you haven't used something in over a year or find yourself saying "I didn't know that was there!" then out it goes. Decide what you can donate to charity or offer at a yard sale and what is just junk, but arise and do so quickly. Don't linger or you may be tempted to keep things. If you just can't part with an old tool for sentimental reasons, re-purpose it either as garden art or for another function. Some old-fashioned green claw weeders, tools my dad and I used when I was a boy, are now handles on gates and shed doors. The tines of a handleless soil rake now hang gloves on the wall.

Organize
Once you've tossed, and mourned, everything that's broken, unused or just plain trash, it's time to find a place for what's left. When every tool has a home it's much easier to replace it when you're done working and to find it next time it's needed.

Ask yourself which tools you use all the time. Which are seasonal? Big soil-turning shovels, landscape rakes and leaf mulchers are put to work infrequently in my garden and find a home in the shed rafters most of the year. Hand spades, pruners and my old iron Japanese "Hori-Hori" tool, a combination trowel, saw and weeder, hang in a five-gallon bucket right on my shed door. It's the first thing I see when I open the shed and often all I need for an afternoon of gardening.

I don't have a lawn, but if you do, keep the mower in a place where it's easy to get out and replace without being in the way. Heavy bags of potting soil, gravel and the like should be stored on a low, heavy duty shelf at about waist level - right at the potting bench if you have one. You won't have to stoop to pick them up or carry them too far and risk a back injury.

Mark the territory
Once you've established where everything goes, mark its area. Outline the shapes of tools on a couple of pieces of pegboard attached to the studs of your garage, or under hangers mounted into the walls. Masking tape, a permanent marker or even paint outlines for each tool may seem like you're turning your storage area into a crime scene, but the idea is to make finding and replacing your tools a no-brainer. And those empty outlines just beg to be filled with tools put back where they belong!

Going up
Thinking vertically can really free up floor space for bulky lawnmowers and wheelbarrows and put things at an easy-to-see level. Special broom hangers, which grip long wooden handled tools by gravity, can be used to keep rakes, shovels and brooms in place. Or just use some large screws driven into exposed studs as hangers.

Speaking of studs, attach a couple of boards horizontally across some and slip a spade or hoe in the space between the boards and the wall.

Revitalize containers
Smaller gardening items - hand tools, the hose nozzle and the like - can fit well into a clear plastic shoe holder hanging on the back of a door. Hey, that might be a good place for garden clogs, too! The transparent pockets make all the little items easy to see at a glance.

Screw soup cans, coffee cans and oatmeal boxes to the underside of wooden shelves with the open ends facing you. The various-sized cylinders are great little pigeonholes for all kinds of tiny items like plant labels, seed packets, stakes or pens.

Keep a dozen or so wire or plastic baskets of various sizes near the door for carrying items like bulbs, tools, harvested vegetables and potted flowers in or out of the garden. Schlepping task-related items together reduces the number of trips you need to make back and forth during a job.

Stay flexible
During the first two or three weeks after you've gotten organized, keep track of things that still frustrate you and find a new solution right away. Don't ever "make do until later." Later never comes, and that temporary work-around solution becomes just another frustration.

As your garden changes, so will your needs. Finding solutions right away will give you more time for spending in the garden. And that's what it's all about, after all!

Active in the horticultural industry since 1994, Glen O. Seibert is a former editor for Garden Gate magazine and now works as a writer, landscape designer and self-professed "gardening media mogul."