At Mirage Landscaping, our crews fan out across Calgary every morning with an array of both power and held-held landscaping tools that allow us to complete your professional landscaping jobs in a time efficient manner. We also carry essential safety equipment to prevent injuries and downtime, too.
Since most Calgary do-it-yourself landscapers don’t have to cover the hundreds of acres we do, quite likely a discussion on the many time-saving power tools we use is mostly moot. Instead we offer a list of what we find to be the ten most useful hand tools that you can buy to keep up your lawn or garden between our visits.
Gloves—Without your hands, you have nothing when it comes to landscaping. Synthetic gloves with ventilating mesh backsides have really come a long way from when all of these products looked – and acted – like golf gloves. Several are also now machine washable.
But if you are not averse to tanned deer or cowhide, there really is no substitute for a tough pair of leather work gloves for repeatedly using metal or wooden handled tools or moving paving stones and decorative rocks.
Shovels—You’ll find a variety of shovels on every Mirage Landscaping truck or trailer. They are indispensable. We use short-handled shovels for rapidly digging transplant holes, and taller shovels for larger holes. For our irrigation jobs we use trench shovels. The type of shovel you come to prefer is really your choice, but no Calgary gardener can get away without one for planting and repair jobs.
Rakes—Other tools you’ll see plenty of around Mirage Landscaping’s work sites in Calgary are rakes, both hard and fan style. The former are most useful for evenly spreading mulch, bark chips, fertilizer, and other substances. Fan rakes are primarily used for the cleanup of grass clippings, leaves and waste. Fan rakes pick up easily off of grassy surfaces, whereas hard rakes are made more for leveling and spreading dirt and other landscaping materials.
Hand Pruners—On the belts of many of our Mirage Landscaping crew members you’ll almost always see a pair of hand pruners. These are essential tools to our landscapers, who often come across shrubs or trees that need immediate attention. Due to the high use and foot traffic of a number of our business landscaping sites trees often have branches broken and shrubs tend to get trampled on. Injured branches need to be removed immediately in order to avoid pests and fungus getting underneath the bark of your plant.
Multitool—There’s nothing more annoying than having to stop what you are doing and go to the tool box just to trim a micro irrigation line or to slash open a bag of grass seed. Having a Multitool will save you a lot of time wasted looking for a knife, screwdriver or pliers. Some even have measurement pips engraved in their sides in English and metric units.
Tank Sprayer—A pressure sprayer holding between 2-20 liters is a very handy tool to have. From applying herbicide in precise spots, to delivering moss and mildew killer to shaded wooden decks or concrete walkways, to hand misting starter plants in your greenhouse, a tank sprayer is an inexpensive addition to your gardening tools. Be certain to thoroughly rinse it when intending to change its contents.
Weeding Tool—It doesn’t matter much if this tool is shaped like a forked tongue screwdriver or is specialised like a Japanese digging knife, being able to simply pop weeds from the ground without having to dig up huge areas of your garden is a massive time saver.
Hand Spade & Cultivator—For those not familiar with these tools, they are the little hand shovel and rake. These are used in close quarters where their larger cousins would be most clumsy, or for your pots and planters. When you are in tight you wouldn’t want anything else larger.
Loppers—Though handheld pruning shears are the first plant-cutting tool commonly looked to for any job, there are tasks too big for them. Thicker branches can be too dense or woody for hand shears to provide adequate leverage for the clean cut required. The lopper, a larger form of the pruning shears mounted to leverage producing extension arms, is an essential tool for pruning trees and tougher shrubs.
Proper Attire—Long pants should be worn around mowers and trimmers, and sun protection should never be overlooked. There are many different styles of landscaping hats that can protect your neck and ears. Long sleeved cotton shirts also provide protection against sunburn, and they can also guard against nasty scratches. Finally, safety glasses to protect your eyes from unintended injury are advisable.
If you want your Calgary area landscaping maintenance to be as stress free as possible, call Mirage Landscaping for a no obligation quote and we’ll be happy to put our hands to work for you!