Digging Deeper: Mastering the Art of Gardening with Trowels

Gardening isn’t just about improving the curb appeal by planting the most breathtaking and dazzling-looking plants. Gardening is also about growing plants, herbs and spices that can improve your health and well-being, and this has been proven too many times. And even though gardening is considered an activity and a job that is usually performed outdoors in the soil in your backyard, the truth is that you can also do it in containers placed on the balcony, deck, patio or literally anywhere you like. Either way, for both of these gardening styles you’ll need a few gardening tools out of which a gardening trowel is a must.

What Is a Garden Hand Trowel?

This is a small gardening hand tool used for breaking up soil, mixing fertilisers and additives, transferring plants to pots and digging small holes for planting. All in all, this is an essential tool that everyone who’s into gardening should have in their gardening tools’ army.

An important thing you should know about this handy and essential gardening tool is that there are different types of trowel gardening tools from which you can choose. Becoming familiar with the wide range of handy garden trowels will help you work smarter and not harder, so make sure not to skip this important step that will help you become a true gardener.

Types of Trowels for Gardening

Traditional

As the name suggests, this is one of the most basic and traditional types of gardening hand tools of its type. This garden tool is the foundation model of all garden trowels. It has been around for years and is one of the most useful tools ever because it can be used for many things. It has a blade that resembles a lot to miniature shovel, a rounded tip and slightly curved sides which are great for holding soil. Practice shows that this traditional tool is ideal for digging holes to plant seeds and can be used for potting into containers.

Transplanting

This trowel has a long and thin blade with a pointed tip and rounded sides in order to be used for transplanting seeds, bulbs and smaller plants from one place to another. It brings out the plant safely by digging up a root ball without damaging seeds, roots or plants. As such, it serves as a precious tool when you need to rearrange your garden, move plants from the containers or use it for other purposes. Its thin and long shape makes it perfect for working in hard-to-reach areas and digging deeper holes.

Dixter

These trowels are long and narrow with blunt and rounded tips. The handle of this trowel has the same length as its thin blade and it’s mainly used for planting into rock gardens as the thin blade allows for getting into quite tight spaces without a problem.

Thanks to the blade’s nature, this trowel is also used for digging up weeds since you can easily get to their roots and remove them from the soil. You can also use it for planting seeds into a drill by using the blade’s tip to create a narrow drill in which you can plant the seeds by using the blade’s edge to fill in the drill.

Ladle

These trowels have a smaller and rounder tip with curved edges, but they also have longer, thinner and tapered piece that leads to the ladle. All of this will allow you to dig around a hole and scoop out the soil with one move creating a nice and clean hole where you can plant your plant/seeds.

Potting

With so many trowels available on the market, you might think that you don’t really need this potting model in particular, however, it has been proven that this type of gardening tool is also handy and convenient. At first sight, it looks quite like the traditional type, however, the potting model has sides that are curved up higher in a scoop-like shape. Thanks to its nature and shape, this model of trowel is mainly used when growing in pots. Aside from making it easy to scoop up potting mix and fill the container, it can also be used for re-potting plants without damaging the roots.

Digging

The digging model features a long and thin blade with a pointed tip resembling an arrow. As the name suggests, it is used for digging holes and for breaking up the soil thanks to its sharp tip. Having a sharper tip means that you can also use this trowel as a cutting tool mainly for cutting an opening into bags.

What Is the Difference Between a Shovel and a Trowel?

As you know by now, trowels are small hand tools used for planting out young plants and bulbs, for breaking up soil and for digging in pots. Quite similar to trowels, shovels, are larger tools with larger handles used for digging, lifting and moving bulk material like soil, gravel, snow, sand, coat, etc. from one place to another. The traditional trowel and shovel look quite similar however, they differ in size and purpose, so what you need for planting plants and herbs is the smaller version – a trowel.