September, 1909.] 



237 



HORTICULTURE, 



LABOUR SAVING TOOLS FOR 

 GARDEN WORK. 



By H. Simmers. 



(From the Annual Report of the Horti- 

 cultural Societies of Ontario for the 

 Year 1908.) 



When your Secretary requested me 

 to read a paper at this Convention on 

 this subject, I accepted the same, not 

 realising at the time the difficulty I had 

 before me of preparing an interesting 

 and practical paper. 



The title of this paper is somewhat 

 deceptive. At the first blush it has the 

 appearance of a certain sweet simplicity, 

 but when one goes into the subject, the 

 real difficulties appear. 



For a practical man to go to work and 

 pick out the tool or tools that he wants 

 seems easy, as, before you commence to 

 work, you have pretty well made up 

 your mind what tools you are going to 

 use on the particular work you intend to 

 do ; but to sit down and arrange as 

 many as possible of the labour-saving 

 tools that you would use, is a more dif- 

 ficult task than I thought it would be 

 until I got to work. 



I assume that I am to speak on tools 

 most suited for amateur work, because 

 to write on this subject for professionals 

 would enlarge it considerably. 



The first, and still the most important 

 tool in the garden, is the human hand, 

 and no doubt in ages past it was the 

 only one. Still, at a very early period, 

 tools of some description had been 

 devised to lighten the labour of the 

 gardener. In our youthful days, also 

 further back than some of us care to 

 admit— a conundrum was propounded- 

 It ran thus, "When Adam delved and 

 Eve span, where was then the gentle- 

 man ?" Of course, the answer, the 

 obvious answer, is that Adam was the 

 gentleman ; and mark you, he was a 

 gardener. Our immediate interest, how- 

 ever, is to enquire what Adam delved 

 with. No doubt he did much work with 

 his hands, still in many gardening oper- 

 ations the very best of tools, but he could 

 not delve very well thus, unless he had 

 something to aid him. The cradle of 

 the human race is in the East, and it is 

 there we can observe customs to-day 

 which had their inception in Adam's 

 time or not long after. The soil there is 

 so sandy and easily worked, that a very 

 primitive stick, sharpened, would be all 

 the labour-saving appliances required. 

 Irrigation is the great problem there, 



In lands under different climatic condi- 

 tions, different circumstances naturally 

 arise, and in our own land one must 

 admit that stirring with a pointed stick 

 would not have much effect. Therefore, 

 other labour-saving tools had to be 

 invented. The king of all is still the 

 spade, which is the most inexpensive, 

 and work well done with it produces more 

 crops than any other form of culture. 



Yon will find that among the first and 

 the last things to be done in almost any 

 garden in spring or fall is to have it dug 

 in the spring and again in the fall, and 

 those who are not so fortunate as to be 

 able to employ a man for this work, 

 will better understand the necessity of 

 a pair of good strong arms. 



The following is a list of good many 

 articles that I have used myself, that 

 I know are labour-saving tools : Spade, 

 shovel, lawn rake, steel rake, field hoe, 

 Dutch hoe, spading fork, manure F ork, 

 garden reel, garden line, grass hooY- or 

 sickle, pruning knife, pruning sh c ars, 

 pruning saw, half moon edging koife, 

 indelible pencil, labels, appliances for 

 destroying insects, hot bed thermometer 

 garden trowel, tree pruner, watering 

 can, wheelbarrow, lawn mower, hand 

 weeders, such as Hazeltine's, Excelsior, 

 etc, wheel plow, wheel hoe, hand seed 

 drill. 



This is a sufficient list of labour-saving 

 tools for the amateur. It seems to me 

 almost useless to go into the detail and 

 description of all the tools that I have 

 listed, and from which I will refrain, 

 but amongst the list, I would like to 

 draw more attention to the Combination 

 Seed Drill, which has the garden plough, 

 wheel hoe and seed drill combined. 

 Now, to those who have a more preten- 

 tious vegetable garden, this modern im- 

 plement is apt to encourage the amateur 

 to extend his work. I would strongly 

 urge the use of one of these combined 

 machines. 



I would also suggest, that all the tools 

 possessed by the amateur be hung up 

 neatly and systematically, and that 

 they should not be thrown in a corner 

 in a careless manner. I see no reason 

 why man's labour-saving tools for garden 

 work should not be kept in the same 

 recise manner that a woman keeps her 

 itchen utensils. I will add further, 

 that the garden tools should also be kept 

 clean and ready for use. 



In conclusion let me add, that many 

 a man can be judged by the orderliness 

 in which he keeps his tools, as also by 

 the way that he keeps his garden free 

 of weeds, 



