My Favorite Gardening Things
In a previous post, I wrote about some lessons learned during my first season of backyard gardening. One the the most fun parts was learning about various tools and resources to make gardening easier and more successful. Here are a few of my favorite gardening things. You’ll find links at the end of this post for several of these great resources and tools.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac
This quirky and beloved publication has been around since 1792 (according to Wikipedia, this makes it the oldest continuously published periodical in North America)!
Inside, you’ll find weather forecasts, articles about gardening, astrological data, and my favorite part, mainly because it’s entertaining, the articles about current trends and predictions about the future.
There is something for everyone inside but it is one of my favorite gardening things because of the very practical and easy-to-follow tips for beginner gardeners. The 2024 edition has some great articles about seed starting and wildflowers. The Old Farmer’s Almanac website is also a great place to find more content about all of the topics mentioned above. They also have a great newsletter that I always enjoy when it hits my inbox.
Clyde’s Garden Planner
This gem of a creation is one of the handiest tools I’ve found so far! It’s a very simple cardstock sleeve with a sliding card that tells the optimal times to plant some of the most popular vegetables and fruits. One side is for spring and the other is for fall. It gets very detailed with dates to start seedlings, plant outdoors, expected harvest dates, and natural companions. You get the idea. This is one of my favorite gardening tools because it’s straight forward, and easy to use.
The New Sunset Western Garden Book
This gorgeous book is in its ninth edition (2012) and is a Sunset Magazine publication. Sunset Magazine has been around for 80 years. It is now primarily a lifestyle magazine featuring articles centered around the Western United States. For me, this magazine is a great escape. The photography is always gorgeous and the articles are aspirational.
The New Sunset Western Garden Book is no different. With beautiful photographic illustrations of almost every plant you can imagine, variations, and instructions on what to do to help them grow and thrive in your garden. If you live in the Western United States, this book is a great investment. I’ve spent hours reading it and fantasizing about the possibilities in my future garden.
The last two favorite gardening things I’ll share here are simple tools.
The first are these small gardening snippers. Technically, I think they are called Bonsai Pruning Scissors but since I don’t use them for bonsai plants, I’m calling them small gardening snippers
They are the perfect tool for thinning out seedlings and harvesting small herbs. They are very inexpensive but also a bit fragile, so don’t try cutting anything too rigid or anything with a thick stem.
Sometimes you don’t need full-on pruning shears and the precision these snippers allow is so satisfying!
Last, but not least is this seed spacing stick.
If you like to follow directions about how to space your seeds when direct sowing them into the ground, this tool is for you! While I do love to chaos garden (the act of scattering seeds without paying attention to spacing or where they’re going to end up) and talk about this more in the video below, sometimes it’s good to pay attention to spacing seeds to give them a better chance of thriving in the soil.
You can buy these tools in a store or online but if you have access to a drill and some wood, you can easily make one at home. I had my husband drill holes 1” apart. This simple tool is one of my favorite gardening things because it makes planting seeds with precision much easier.
Now that the spring gardening season is here, I’ll have many updates as I start planting and will continue to add to my list of favorite gardening things. I’d love to hear about your favorite gardening things; feel free to tell me about them in the comments below.
Here are links to some of the items above. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. If you buy something through the links on this website, I may earn an affiliate commission, at no cost to you. I only recommend products I use, love, and want to share with my audience.
The 2024 Old Farmer’s Almanac Trade Edition
Clyde’s Garden Planner – Clyde’s Vegetable Planting Slide Chart
The New Western Garden Book: The Ultimate Gardening Guide
Bonsai Pruning Scissors
