Her War

Interpreting Women's Lives during the American Civil War

Garden Tools

Return to Kitchen Garden

The following gardening tools are suggested in Gardening for the South; or the Kitchen and Fruit Garden:  With the Best Methods for their Cultivation, together with Hints Upon Landscape and Flower Gardening.

Shovel
Used to load and spread composts and manures.

Manure Forks
Four-tined ones cut out of solid plate are best—indispensable for moving fresh long manures

Forked Spade
Three-tined fork to loosen earth and dig in manures

Garden Reel and Linegarden/garden_reel.jpg
Good hemp cord ¼” in diameter; axis of reel fastened in earth

Cultivator
Replaces hand-hoeing in market gardens

Wheelbarrow
Indispensable in smallest garden to carry manure, apply compost, move soil, gather crops

Garden Roller
Valuable to follow putting in of all seeds in sandy soils

Spade
For lifting plants, trenching, etc

Crowbar
Used to set poles for limbers and removing rocks

Drill Rake
Made of wood, and teeth placed at a greater or less distance for sowing different seeds; several different sizes required.

Dibble
Convenient to transplant cabbages and other small plants earth with roots

garden/plow.jpgSubsoil Plough
Great service in large gardens; requires a powerful team to operate it.

 

 

One-Horse Turning Plough
Very efficient among larger garden crops; a strong animal is required.

Trowel
Is a much better implement for removing flowers and other tender plants, as they can be taken up with a ball of earth attached without injury to the plants.

Screens
For sifting earth, meshes ¼ of inch in diameter

Hand Syringes
Useful in watering plants in gardens or in pots; should be made of copper, with several caps of greater or lesser fineness, including one inverted or gooseneck cap to wash underside of leaves

Watering Pots
Best are of copper.  There should be two or three roses of different fineness.  Tin ones should be painted occasionally, to prevent rusting.

Hoes
Draw-hoe should be of cast steel plate six inches long and four inches wide; also thrust-hoe

Triangular Draw-Hoe
For digging furrows, sowing seeds, scraping surface and killing weeds

Four-Pronged Hoe
For working loose earth

Garden Rake
To level and finely pulverize ground preparatory to sowing small seeds