The Best Free Gardening Tool

I love flowers. Love, love, love them!

However.

They don't love me.

Besides my well documented brown thumb, I'm also allergic to most of them.

Like really allergic.

So I'm more of a look, but don't touch kind of gardener.

Is that even a thing?

Well, no, it's not.

Kind of impossible to plant anything if you can't touch it.

And that's where my DIY husband comes in. He's the gardener around here. Even if he doesn't really like it.

Oh, he enjoys the watering and the trimming, the puttering and the perennial planting. What he can't stand is annuals.

All that digging and planting for one short season of growth? Nope.

That's not very efficient and for a guy who's all about streamlining, it's a task he hates.


But his wife likes flowers and he's a very good husband, so every spring he plants. My hero.

To say it's not his favorite way to spend an afternoon is an understatement.

So several years ago, determined to make the process of planting all those flats quicker and easier, he ditched the shovel and came up with his very own plant stake...or digging tool.

For free!!

And he's used it ever since.

No. It's not a vampire stake. It's just a simple piece of wood, leftover from some home decor project, sharpened on one end, so it can poke into the ground in precisely the size he needs for those tiny cell pack plants.


How does he use it? Simple.

He pushes the wooden stake into the dirt and they moves it around in a circle to widen the hole enough to plop the flower in.


Next, he removes the plant from the cell pack and gently pulls at the roots a teeny bit, since most of them are root bound.

Then he places the tiny plant in the hole and tucks the dirt back in around it. And he's done.


He uses this trick in pots all the time. It makes it easy to add several flowers at a time, in tight spaces, without having to displace large clumps of dirt.

Or disturb other flowers that may have already been planted.

However, it's most helpful in the garden beds where there are lots of flowers to plant at once.

Again, it eliminates the digging and placing dirt in other piles, etc. Just poke, rotate and plop.

Even better, you can clearly see the holes with no soil or debris between them, so you can space them out evenly - a must for a Type A gardener.

How easy is that?


You can see it in action right here. He made several holes very quickly and didn't even need to move the mulch out of the way.

Then he placed all those little flowers in their new home with lightening speed. It would work very well for planting bulbs, too.

We're going to try that this year.


He was done planting and watering, I might add, in a few minutes. Which made him super happy.

And this armchair gardener even happier.


Plus, the plants positively thriving.

So I'd say that's a win-win-win.

And all with no shovel required.

How fabulous.

What's your favorite free gardening cheat?