Neither of us leave tools out - our dry desert sunshine quickly splinters wood handles and destroys anything rubber or plastic. Besides, neither of us like having to hunt for a tool the other one was using last week. It just makes life easier when tools always get put back in their place after use. So we have a tool shed. Centrally located down among the chicken coop, orchard and garden, it was originally built as a small hay shed back when we still had the horses and goat. Now that they, and the corrals, are gone it's lined with hooks and shelves for garden tools, pots and planters, a mouse-proof plastic bin of frost-protection blankets, hoses in the winter, plus the chicken feed bins.
I love wandering in my garden - summer evenings especially. Or I might head out there with a gathering basket, planning to harvest something. No matter the reason, whenever I'm out there, I'll usually find a little something to be done: a bit of pruning, something that needs to be tied up, a leaking hose connection, weeds to be pulled. But I'd usually left my gloves in the house, plus then I hated having to go back and forth, in and out of the garden, to the tool shed and back every time I needed a little hand tool (and back again, putting everything away afterwards). I needed a hand-tool shed right there in the garden.
So, a few years ago, when I saw a huge rural-type mailbox at a neighbors' garage sale, I knew it was just what I was looking for - big enough to hold all sorts of useful little garden tools, small enough to be unobtrusive, and designed to provide weather-proof protection year-round. Perfect! I had just the place for it too! I have a cable spool just inside the garden gate - placing the mailbox out over the edge enough to open the door left plenty of room for my solar radio and a cold drink, seed packets, my gathering basket, or whatever else I might bring out while working in the garden.
Now, it's so nice having everything I might want close at hand, year-round. Besides a weather-proof place to keep my trowel, shears, hose washers, kneeling pad, and gloves, it's also a handy place to stash twist-ties, string, old pieces of pantyhose - all the little bits and pieces that can be re-purposed in the garden. I guess you could call it my garden version of a junk drawer, too.
24 comments:
Great!
Our tool shed is also our potting shed and greenhouse, basically the part of the "barn" walled off from critters.
This time of the year we need our hand tools and irrigation accessories nearer to the garden, so we hung a couple of empty hanging-fuchsia-pots near the compost tumbler in an apple tree, and dumped everything in those.
What a great idea!
Great idea. I am keeping an eye out for a large box now.
Thank you for sharing!
Brilliant idea. Somewhere in the mess that is the garage we have an extra mailbox! Tomorrow's project is to search for it. I think I'll add something drawer-like out of cardboard or a basket to corral the bits and pieces. Thanks.
That would never work here. Our humidity is so great that our tools would rust in no time. In fact our mail is soggy if you pick it up more than a few hours after it gets delivered. Glad it works for you though.
Excellent idea!
What a great idea indeed.
Hi seeing the old mailbox brought back memories. My GrandDa used their old mail box for small garden tools. Lasted years though sometime he had to evict an irate bird.
I totally love this idea! Even tho my yard is really small I could use this myself. Thanks!!!!!!!!
Karen from CT
What a neat idea! I would have never thought of that!
What's in the bottle?
Sadge, that is so cool. I have got to get me something like that. I am forever hunting down my garden tools.
That is so cool Sadge!
My hand-tools are all inside my house at the moment...simply cause I seem to use them just as much inside the house as well as outside. No doubt once I finish home decorating, I'll be looking for a place to put them outside again.
This is a great idea!
The bottle holds (held, it's about empty) lemon furniture oil with sunscreen. I've been using it on my wooden tool handles to help prevent splitting and splintering.
Interesting combo!!
Before I finished reading it I'm going "furniture polish and sunscreen"!?!?! Wha....? lol
Brilliant!
(does it work?)
Love the recycled aspect of it as well as the utility of having your tools at hand. Bravo!
Colorado sister.
Great idea! I have a small enough yard I just keep my hand tools in a rectangular 'bucket' - but for a larger place that's brilliant!
Happy gardening!
nice idea...spray it once in awhile to be sure no recluse spiders decide to nest in your gloves.
www.wildlifearoundus.blogspot.com
ohhh.... did the furniture oil come *with* the sunscreen already in it?? I was thinking you mixed up your own...
Good point, Carol! I'll usually dump everything out once or twice a year, and haven't seen any spiders yet. The gloves often do go back in the house with me, too. The heat build-up inside a black box in the sun, or the smell of the lemon oil soaked rag in there might be a spider deterrent too.
Annodear: the lemon furniture oil has sunscreen already in it. It's made by Weiman, and a Google search brought it up for $4 a bottle. I'm not sure if it really works, but all my tool handles are a lovely shade of tan.
;-)
Diane: I do use some items to keep things corraled a bit. The hose washers, plus a small screwdriver to use as a prybar, live in a small yoghurt cup. The pantyhose pieces (nice indestructible stretchy tie-up material for climbing roses and big tomato plants) are in a plastic bread bag. A pull-out drawer/box that fits the entire inside wouldn't be a bad idea, though.
Gleenlife: I haven't found any wildlife inside - I keep the door closed and it does heat up inside. But I did lose the use of one of my straw garden hats for a season when I hung in in the big tool shed for a couple of days and came back to find a nest inside.
Love this idea! I want one for my potager.
Thanks for the great idea! Now I have something to search for @ yard sales and such. (I love the simple green frugal coop blog... it's full of so many varied perspectives and suggestions and ideas. Brilliant!)
Great idea, its not so much the dusty sand but the wet weather that ruins garden tools where I live.....I'm sure if I could find one of those mailboxes it'd do the trick for me too!
excellent! thanks for the link. it's great to see what other people use their garden mailboxes for!
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