The essential tools for planting in the garden

Planting tools for ornamental gardening or container growing.

When you love gardening year-round, and especially in spring and autumn, there’s always something to plant: perennials or grasses in your border beds, annual or biennial flowers sold in pots, in your window boxes and pots on balconies and terraces… To brighten your garden through the seasons. Nevertheless, these plantings are greatly facilitated if you own the essential gardening tools. Moreover, with the right tools, tailored to each task, you give yourself the best chance of success with your plantings.

For planting ornamental plants, two tools are essential: the dibber and the transplanter. Two tools absolutely indispensable as soon as you set foot in a garden or into the soil. In addition, there is the very specific flower-pot dibber that proves very useful.

The dibber, the versatile planting tool

With its long, conical, pointed head and its handle, the dibber is an extremely simple tool. Yet it proves its worth! While displaying robustness beyond measure. You simply push it into the soil to dig planting holes, typically small and pointed. That is why the dibber is ideal for sowing large seeds such as sunflowers or sweet peas, but also for planting flowering plants, annuals and biennials, or herbs, offered as minimottes. Indeed, the planting hole doesn’t need to be very large for plug plants, and the dibber is more than adequate.

This type of dibber is also used for bulb planting. Although the bulb planter is considerably more practical and suited.

You will also use this dibber in the vegetable garden for transplanting young seedlings of vegetable plants, sown by you or purchased as plug plants.

There are different models of dibbers, from the very traditional to the more luxurious. It all depends on your preferences and budget. But the difference often comes down to grip comfort, ergonomics, sturdiness and thus durability. The simplest dibber is made entirely of steel. Other dibbers are fitted with a curved wooden handle for a better grip, or with a profiled wooden handle which makes them very easy to handle. Finally, some dibbers have a longer handle to save the gardener from bending.

The two most common forms of the dibber

The transplanter, the mini-spade for planting and transplanting

To keep it simple, the transplanter is essentially a mini-spade. Indeed, a transplanter consists of a handle, of varying length, and a small blade, slightly curved. As its name suggests, this tool is used to transplant or plant perennials or grasses, offered in pots. It therefore allows planting of larger plants than a dibber could. It can also be used to mix potting soil or compost into garden soil in pots and containers.

Again, there are different models of transplanters. Some transplanters are made entirely of steel, others feature a wooden handle or a resin handle, more pleasant to grip. There are also long-handled transplanters, very useful to prevent backache.

There are also specialist transplanters on the market, equipped with more unusual blades. Transplanters with a graduated head are handy for estimating planting depth, those with a tulip-shaped head, equipped with teeth, are better suited to clay soils. There are also transplanters with a heart-shaped blade, very handy for potting. Or others with very narrow blades that slip between existing plantings without damaging them. Finally, the traditional transplanting tool with a spork-shaped head is particularly versatile for potting or vegetable plots: it allows planting, but also loosening the soil and weeding.

The indispensable transplanter for planting plug plants in the soil

The remarkable flower-pot planter

The flower-pot planter is a tool you might not have thought of, but proves extremely handy for planting pots of perennials or grasses, offered in 11 to 15 cm pots. A professional tool, it is ideal in well-worked, loose and fairly light soils. Indeed, the basket-shaped head hollows out sizeable holes, into which you simply place the plant.