Gardening Essentials For The Fall Gardener

Gardening is one of our favorite hobbies here at Rosevine Cottage, even though fall is upon us it doesn’t mean the work is over. We’ve put together our favorite gardening essentials to help you through the fall gardening season. Whether you’re a beginning gardener or have some growing under your belt garden tools is something we all need to make our lives a little easier.

The Best Garden Tools To Prepare Your Garden For Spring

Often people think that when the growing season wraps up in the fall that the work ends, but that just isn’t the case. Fall and even winter is the perfect time to prepare for your spring garden. We’ve put together some fall garden essentials so you can get a move on preparing a garden for spring.

This post contains affiliate links

Garden Gloves

Garden Gloves are an absolute garden essential! Every gardener should have a pair in the tool bag (or you know two or three). There are tons of options out there from fabric to leather, plain to colorful prints. Garden gloves aren’t just cute, they’re super practical. So why did garden gloves make the garden essentials list?

• Garden gloves protect your hands while pulling weeds, pruning or handling garden tools.
• They help you grip weeds as you weed your garden.
• Garden gloves keep your hands clean so you don’t have to worry about trying to get the dirt out from under your nails.

My favorite garden gloves are always going to be leather, over the cutesy fabric in fun prints. I love that I can tackle all of my fall gardening projects without switching them out.

Leather garden gloves are great for pruning or working with anything that has thorns. My favorite pair cover my arms up to my elbow, they’re perfect for working with our raspberry or rose bushes. If I’m not using this pair then my wrist length garden gloves are my go-to.

The Best Garden Shears 

Garden shears or pruning tools are another fall garden essential that made our list. The fall garden season is a time of cleaning up which makes pruning on the top of many gardener’s to-do lists.

We have two types of garden shears that we always have on hand:

 Garden Clipper

A garden clipper AKA a garden scissor, or bypass pruner. Garden clippers are perfect for deadheading, removing small branches, or even clipping back grass.

Some things to keep in mind when choosing a garden clipper:

• Foam grip ones will help to protect your hands after prolonged use
• If you have to choose just one type of pruner to have on hand, make sure you have one these bypass pruners.

Here at Rosevine Cottage, we use a pair of titanium bypass pruners.

Anvil Lopper

This baby is the garden clipper’s big brother. They make the gardening essentials list because these are perfect for cutting out dead branches. We’ll be putting our pair to good use

Some things to keep in mind when choosing an anvil lopper:

• Pad grips will be your friend when it comes to working with these.
• The longer the handle the better.

Anvil loppers come in high on our garden essential list. We use this in the orchard for pruning, in the garden for removing any trees that have decided to plant themselves in inconvenient places, or just to prune things that are too tall to use the little garden clippers on. We even use it to remove any thistles at the ground. We use these anvil loppers here at Rosevine Cottage.

Small Garden Tools for The Fall Gardener 

Hand tools are the backbone of the gardener’s arsenal, from hand shovels to bulb planters they will make preparing your garden for spring so much easier. These garden essentials are must-haves for every gardener:

Hand Trowels

Hand trowels are at the top of the list when it comes to garden essentials! We like to keep a couple of these handy for planting, transplanting, and digging herbs out of the garden before the first freeze. I prefer ones with a grip to protect your hand, but a simple one will work just fine.

Bulb Planters

Bulb planters will make planting those fall bulbs a breeze. We put this guy to work this time of year getting tons of bulbs in the ground for spring blooms. This tool does all the work for you by digging the hole, all you have to do is plop the bulb in the hole and cover it with the soil. If that doesn’t make it a garden essential I don’t know what does.

Garden Hand Fork

Another garden essential is a hand fork, this is a great tool for breaking up hard soil or mixing compost into your soil. Hand forks are great for working with small plants and weeding. Another name for this tool is a weeding fork.

Related Article: How To Start A Fall Garden

More Gardening Essentials For The Fall

Rake

A rake is another garden essential for the fall gardener, whether that be for raking up leaves, leveling your soil or just general clean up around the garden this is a must. We like to keep two different types of rakes on hand:

• A Lawn and Leaf Rake
• And A Heavy-Duty Rake

Pro tip: Add the leaves to the top of your raised beds, or into your compost bin. They will rot down and create beautiful soil for next year.

Garden Fork

A Garden Fork is another gardening essential, this is a gem when it comes to getting the compost pile ready for winter. It’s the perfect tool for any garden project that requires you to turn the soil. This can be used as the hand fork to break up hard soil.

Wheel Barrow

Wheelbarrows are another gardening essential that will make your fall gardening so much easier. These are a must this time of year especially if you have a raised bed garden.

Row Covers

If you are going to be growing a fall garden then row covers should be on your list of garden essentials! Row covers will protect your garden from everything from bugs to frosts.

Compost Bin

And last but not least of our fall gardening essentials is a compost bin. These are perfect for those leaf piles you’ve been raking up. We’ve used this compost bin in our garden for years.

11 Gardening Essentials For The Fall Gardener

Preparing a garden for spring is one of our favorite fall chores, I love wrapping up the growing season and getting the garden ready for winter. The promise it holds for the coming year, it’s a time to enjoy a change of pace and celebrate the victories, and losses of the year while planning for next year.

These gardening essentials are sure to make your fall gardening a little bit easier, and they’re products that we use in our own yard and garden.

Did we miss a gardening essential? Let us know in the comments!

Before you go, check these out:

• How To Prepare Your Garden For Winter
• Planning A Fall Garden
• How To Make Your Own Organic Garden Soil