Tools care that cuts costs
G I
ARDENING may well be a triumph of nurture over nature but there is only so much you can do with your bare hands. Taming nature demands the right tools of the trade and they need an occasional spot of nurturing themselves.
So take advantage of a rainy winter’s day to shut yourself away in the shed and crack on with the job.
Set yourself up with a bucket of warm soapy water and a stiff brush, plus an old kitchen knife or a wire brush for easing off dried-on muck and clean up your collection of spades, forks, hoes, rakes and trowels. Leave them to dry, then sharpen anything that needs it.
Mower blades, shears and secateurs are the obvious candidates but if you have an old iron spade or hoes (don’t try to sharpen stainless-steel ones) they’ll benefit from a light touch-up too, which will make them easier to use.
If you have a workbench with a vice for holding blades steady while you work on them, it’s worth investing in a decent sharpening stone – ideally several of different sizes and grades for different sorts of blades – though these days you can get tool-sharpening attachments for electric drills such as the Dremel, which are incredibly effective and easy to use.
If you don’t feel happy about sharpening tools yourself, look out for the sort of old-fashioned hardware shop that can do it for you. You might even be lucky enough to have a travelling knife grinder and shear sharpener knocking at your door but alas they are largely a thing of the past.
When tools are clean and dry, get to work with a can of easing oil such as WD40 and spray all the metal surfaces generously to stop them rusting, paying particular attention to moving parts and places where water could linger IF YOU loathe dandelions, give them a second chance. There’s more to them than meets the eye. They are great “chancers”.
The reason they can spread so fast is not only due to the dandelion clocks that distribute huge quantities of thistledown seeds on the breeze. The resulting seedlings can adapt themselves to suit different habitats.
In your lawn, dandelions grow into wide flat rosettes so they pass safely under the mower but in a shaggy roadside verge, hedge bottom or on crowded wasteland they grow almost upright as tufts of leaves that push up through their neighbours to grab more than their fair share of light and outdo the competition.
As weeds go, dandelions are quite useful.
Over the years the flowerheads have been made into dandelion wine, the roots roasted to make dandelion coffee and young foliage used as salad leaves, which are surprisingly healthy eating.
They contain lots of vitamins and minerals and the plants start growing early in spring so are available long before most cultivated crops.
Our medieval ancestors knew their value, eating the leaves as a tonic each spring after a winter without fresh veg. They such as the axis of shears and secateurs. To economise, some people use general purpose DIY oil or even old engine oil, which they paint on with an old brush.
The real enthusiast will then wrap up tools in oiled paper and pack them away. However for most of us those see-through plastic storage boxes from hardware and DIY stores are a good way to keep smaller tools, so you can see where everything is, while long-handled tools such as spades and hoes are best hung up on proper tool racks on the wall of the shed or garage. F you own specialist gadgets, power tools or garden machinery the best advice is always to hang on to the owner’s handbook and follow the maker’s instructions to the letter, especially while expensive items are under warranty.
I know looking after gardening tools is another job to do but look at it this way: over the years you’ll save yourself the cost of replacing several new sets of gardening gear, leaving hard-earned cash to be spent on things you really want to buy such as plants, a new barbecue and garden furniture – and all for an afternoon’s work and a spot of elbow grease.
WEED KING WITH A TASTE OF THE WILD
are tasty too, so if you have a salad patch today it’s worthwhile cultivating a short row. You can transplant a few seedlings found wild round the garden, sow your own from a freshly picked dandelion clock or even buy a named variety of dandelion, called Pissenlit, that’s cultivated especially for salad-leaf production.
If you feel faintly foolish at the thought of spending money on weed seeds then let me assure you that Pissenlit has been specially bred so that the plants delay flowering until far later than wild dandelions, and have fewer flowers.
Wild or tame, you can simply snip off a few of the tender young leaves from the centre of each plant as soon as they are big enough and keep doing so from early spring until autumn.
It’s worth removing the flower stalks regularly before the buds open, since besides keeping your weed problem down the plants devote more effort to producing new leaves.
For the very best salad leaves, blanch individual plants by putting a large flower pot or old bucket over the top for a week or two.
Take precautions against slugs and snails too. They’ll happily hole up underneath and ruin results.