Garden Love

Thanks to new gardening tools, I’ve been able to unsubscribe from the old adage “no pain, no gain.” Here are my top tool picks:

1. Harvesting and sharing the food you’ve grown is rewarding. The back-breaking job of turning the soil, not so great. Luckily, I’ve found the Leverage Cultivator (shown here). It tears through the soil with just the application of body weight. No twisting or lifting, just deeply aerated soil.

2. Another pain is having to thin plants after over-seeding. I tried Seed Spoons and what a difference they make! The two spoons each have two differently sized divets at their tips that pick up individual seeds. One-per-hole planting just got a lot easier.

3. Now, with my Hori Hori knife – a multi-purpose, Japanese garden tool – I’m ready for the onslaught of weeds and slugs. It makes easy work of transplanting – and mincemeat out of vines and weeds. It comes with a belt sheath, which I’ll be rocking this summer, like a back pain-free, gardening ninja.

- Tory Healy, Food Associate

Leverage Cultivator, $42; Seed Spoons, $3.95; stainless steel Hori Hori knife, $29, all available at Lee Valley Tools, leevalley.com.