Hand gardening tools that work well are nearly impossible to find today. It isn’t because gardeners don’t need them; it’s because the money is in more expensive solutions like gasoline powered tillers. Few manufacturers invest time and effort in tools like garden trowels.
Fiskars, a Finnish company with roots extending all the way back to the beginning of the industrial age and the first commercial ironworks, still makes the effort to develop better hand tools. In the Fiskars Garden Knife they come pretty close. The construction is a bit light but they compensate that with a good warranty.
The Garden Knife attempts to combine several old farming tools in one new combo, with some modern perks thrown in. The garden hand trowel, a narrow shovel blade for transplanting and digging planting holes in loose soil, is the foundation of the new Knife. A forked and sharpened tip mimics an old weedcutter design built to sever weeds several inches below the surface, fairly effective at stunting or stopping tough perennials like dandelions and wild cucumber. A serrated edge adds potential for cutting through tough tree roots that inevitably invade any fertile garden spot.
The knife edge puzzles me, as does the indented center trough of the blade. The trough is supposed to aid in transplanting and in planting seeds; the straight edge blade is said to aid in digging. I’m not certain how all that would work or help, but possibly I could learn.
If you garden without using poisons, or you like to work in the sun amongst the rows without the roar of a gasoline engine assaulting your eardrums, tools like the Garden Knife are essential.
