Keeping and maintaining properly your garden tools is important if you want to have a beautiful garden or a stunning greenhouse.
Each amateur gardener has metal gardening tools. It is known very well how quickly these tools get dirty and rust. Let’s see together some practical tips that can help you maintain your gardening tools.
Cleaning operations do not last very long and it is not complicated, but you need a few essential things.
Metal Tools
1| The first step you need to make it in this operation is to find and fill with dry sand, an old bucket or a larger pot roomy enough to store in it all your metal tools.
2| Mix the sand with machine oil (it is also good cooking oil) until the sand is well soaked.
3| Prepare your tools before proceeding to the next step. Using a knife or a spatula, remove the hardened mud from tools and especially, which is on the metal part.
4| The next step is to insert in the sand mixed with oil, all your gardening tools that have a metal part, i.e. shovels, spades, rakes, shears, etc.
5| Place the bucket or pot that contains your tools in a dry and cool place to keep them safe during the winter. You just have to let mixture of sand and oil to do their work.
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Wooden Tools
For wooden tools is also advisable to brush them with oil so as not to crack or not dry in winter. Then place them in storage without worrying until spring.
After winter has passed and spring is coming, you need your tools to reshape your garden. So you just need to unload each of them from the bucket with sand, where they stayed for several months, and to wipe them with a soft cloth to remove both sand and oil. You will be surprised how good they look, almost like new and without rust.
However, if you didn’t kept your gardening tools in the bucket with the mixture of oil and sand, don’t worry. In the spring you can put them a couple of times in this mixture of sand and oil and then rub them thoroughly to remove any dirt or rust. The mixture of sand and oil can be used anytime, whenever you need. Put the tools in their place after you have cleaned them thoroughly.
Before using them, make sure they don’t have bent or broken wooden parts and eventually replace them with new ones and also check and if the fixing nails were broken or rusty. Also change the fastening nails to not end up with broken tools while working in the garden.
After each use clean your tools and keep them in a particular order to find them more easily.
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