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Where do you store your gardening tools?

 
Anne Miller
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I saw this picture and thought this would make a interesting topic:


source

Some other ideas:


source


source


This is a different approach:


source

My garden spade has gone missing and the last person to use it has no idea what happened to it.

Where do you keep your tools? Pictures welcome.

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Everyone learns what works by learning what doesn't work. Stephen Herrod Buhner

 
Eric Hanson
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At the present all my garden tools are stored in my garage, but I would actually like to move them out of the garage into a small shed.

Some places need to be wild

 
L. Johnson
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Mostly in my seed starting greenhouse. But they're not well organized.

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Nancy Reading
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My tools are supposed to be in a small shed. It is a plastic one that came with the shop, so has got to be about 20 years old. We relocated it to home because it kept blowing over if it wasn't full. Screwed together with a bit of reinforcement it stays up pretty well since it is constantly full now. Unfortunately I rather hate it! It is about 5ft x 6ft with a double door at the narrow side. To brace it we had to fix one door shut, so the remaining door is rather narrow to get through and, because of where we located it, it is a big step up into it. I made a sort of workbench with shelving using pallets, but it isn't very strong, and for some reason never was braced properly. When the wind blows strongly (i.e. most of the time in winter) the whole lot shakes and everything falls off the shelves.
As well as my gardening tools, I keep other gardening miscellany like string, netting, harvesting pots and bags, as well as most of my store of cardboard for mulching. This means I can't even get into the shed sometimes! My handtools tend to migrate to our front hallway or on the stairs, every now and then I have a tidy up to relocate them. Bigger tools often end up in the barn or workshop because they are easier to access....Everything also usually ends up in the polytunnel too, since that is nice and light and dry. Just at the moment it needs recovering though so not good for tool storage.
What I need is a better shed, or use that one just for longer term storage. I'm hoping that I can make some space in our new utility room when it is built. I also think I need to sort through my collection of useful pots. Not just the plant pots, which I also have too many of, but the plastic punnets and tubs that I've kept because they ought to be useful, but often end up degraded before they've been used for their second life.

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If anyone knows where all my gardening tools are, please PM me.  I do have 8 x 16 garden shed, but only a few tools are in there.  I also have a double car port that serves as a machine shed, but there are still a number of tools that cannot be accounted for.

….give me coffee to do the things I can and bourbon to accept the things I can’t.

 
Jay Angler
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Anne Miller wrote:

I saw this picture and thought this would make a interesting topic:

Those pictures are missing a fey key ingredients: dirt, mud, soil, dead bugs, pollen - what did I miss?

I did have a version of the "mail-box" small tool holder in what was originally the main veggie garden. Unfortunately, as surrounding trees grew up and organization changed, the box got removed from its post and abandoned. I've got a new garden area and I'd like to set it up again if I can decide for sure that there won't be a bunch of changes again. It is useful for keeping a trowel, a forked weeder and a pair of knee pads in for when I stop buy on my way from chicken tending etc and have a couple of minutes to do something useful.

The former owners built a chicken coop and the hallway of it had hooks for larger tools like shovels, rakes, forks etc. We still keep many of those tools there over winter, but they tend to be spread throughout our weird-shaped property once they're being used on a weekly basis. I just don't have time to walk to a central location every time I need a tool as due to large trees, our gardening areas are in pockets of sunshine without even a direct path between.

However, both coop and garden are pretty damp places in the winter, so quality tools like secateurs and pole pruners are in a corner of the garage. Less tendency to rust, but not the most convenient location.

The biggest problem is that as bad as I am at keeping things like that organized, I live with people who are worse!

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L. Johnson
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My greenhouse has leaks... More reasons to find a better place to store them. They used to be in the moldy spider storage, but that's much less convenient.

I have a few good options.

One is an outdoor storage cabinet. Currently it's housing things we never use, and it's located in an annoying spot. Relocating and repurposing would effect three positive changes.

Another is to put together a more organized and more weather proof storage system where they are in the greenhouse. That would require creativity and engineering. I seem to be short on those.

A third is to get or make a decent toolbox and keep them inside when not in use.

(edits for spelling from phone input)

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Morfydd St. Clair
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The Kleingarten came with a very nice teeny cottage, with external doors into a main room and two smaller rooms.  
--The smallest is where things like long-handled tools, the watering can and hose, and the lawnmower live.  This is usually more or less organized.  
--Next to it is a small metal shed, which could be nicely organized, with shelving and all, but it's where the BF keeps his tools and he resists my subtle nudges.  So I leave it to him and the spiders.
--The cottage came with an adorable bench with a flip-up storage seat, which tucked nicely into a covered alcove and held my hand tools and small gardening things.

However, it finally fell apart, and this is the year to focus on the patio and setting up an outdoor kitchen, so I bought this:  https://www.ikea.com/de/de/p/sunnersta-spuelentisch-90302079/
 

Under the left counter will live the mobile rocket stove to stay out of the rain, under the right side will live some storage boxes, I'll hang some things off the top rack.  The sink won't be hooked up to anything, mostly filled with boiling water for dishes from time to time, and when not in use I'll put a box with my hand tools in it, covered with a cutting board to keep critters out.

Eventually we will actually put this together and I will take pictures!
 
Tereza Okava
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Anne, I love the pallet idea you shared, and I have a piece of wood (old bedslat thing) I've been saving just for that, but not sure about where it needs to go.
Currently my tools are all hanging around on the back porch, and they need sorted, quite frankly.
I can't do a closed shed or cabinet (too many brown spiders) and the sun is so brutal that it really damages handles, wood or plastic so they need some sort of protection. This month I'm looking forward to getting my garden in order and this is on the list. Thanks for the nudge!
 
Michelle Heath
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My tools are mostly in the shed but hand tools have a way of making it inside and I haven't seen that #$%& new trowel since the first time I used it. It could be outside, obstructed from view by leaves, in the entryway or it could have just sprouted legs and walked off.  My shed isn't pretty as it was formerly a chicken house and needs a good scrubbing,  two new doors and many more improvements. It does however work for storing tools, seed starting supplies and makes a handy place to dry herbs.  

I once worked at a nursery where the outside phone was in one mailbox and hand tools were supposed to be in another but never were.  My mom keeps their old mailbox in the garden and stores hand tools and gloves in it.  I actually intended to use our mailbox in the garden after it had been knocked over by a truck cutting the curve too close.  However I managed to knock most of the dents out of it and bent it back in shape enough so the door will close, so until it's hit again or the door falls off I don't intend on putting the new box up.

Forever creating a permaculture paradise!

 
L. Johnson
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Morfydd St. Clair wrote:
--The cottage came with an adorable bench with a flip-up storage seat, which tucked nicely into a covered alcove and held my hand tools and small gardening things.



I like this idea a lot. Building one probably fits one or two of the PEP badge bits.

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Stacy Witscher
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I have garden tools in most of my gardens. Each garden has a 5 gallon bucket with organizer with basic tools, pruners, ties, gloves, hori hori knife, etc. As well as storage for shovels, rakes etc. There is a storage are by my raised bed garden that houses some specialty tools, like racket pruners and such. I like to have everyday stuff easily accessible. My youngest also bought me a gardening apron that I love. I can protect my clothes and also carry a hori hori knife, pruners and gloves with me everywhere, love it. I will try to post a picture tomorrow.

Living a life that requires no vacation.

 
Lxe Anastasio
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I picked up a couple of aluminum diamond plated pickup truck toolboxes used for about $75 each.
Long enough to hold shovels and rakes. Deep enough for bags of fertilizer or the like.
They are weatherproof and very rugged. I like low maintenance things (no paint, no rot).

Set them on cinder blocks and you also have a bench.

 
Morfydd St. Clair
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That's brilliant!  I'm totally not in pickup country or I'd be stealing that idea immediately.
 
Jay Angler
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Lxe Anastasio wrote:I picked up a couple of aluminum diamond plated pickup truck toolboxes used for about $75 each.
Long enough to hold shovels and rakes. Deep enough for bags of fertilizer or the like.
They are weatherproof and very rugged. I like low maintenance things (no paint, no rot).

Set them on cinder blocks and you also have a bench.

Welcome to permies!
I agree that if I could find one (or several) cheap, I could definitely put them to work as they look like they'd be mouse-proof also! I'd make a joke about "thinking outside the box", but in this case, it's about all the things I could put *in* the box!

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Carla Burke
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Lxe Anastasio wrote:I picked up a couple of aluminum diamond plated pickup truck toolboxes used for about $75 each.
Long enough to hold shovels and rakes. Deep enough for bags of fertilizer or the like.
They are weatherproof and very rugged. I like low maintenance things (no paint, no rot).

Set them on cinder blocks and you also have a bench.  



I'm SO stealing this idea!! We need deck furniture, anyway - but, I despise those big plastic patio storage monstrosities. This is perfect, and will contain what becomes junk in the off season!

"The only thing...more expensive than education is ignorance."~Ben Franklin
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." ~ Plato

 
Morfydd St. Clair
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Flatpack kitchenette successfully unflattened!  This is as tidy as it will ever be, though I'm thinking of putting a small shelf on the left where the extra pots currently are.  Also, now that I can find them all, I have too many gloves and should move some into reserve storage:
storage3.JPG
Flatpack kitchenette ikea assembly
storage4.JPG
garden storage useful and tidy
 
Morfydd St. Clair
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And bonus pictures of the little tool room.  I try to clean it out and re-organize it every spring and fall.  Gardena doesn't necessarily make the highest quality tools, but I love the swappable heads that can go on and off the long handle.  I might own every available attachment...
storage1.JPG
Gardena doesn't necessarily make the highest quality tools, but I love the swappable heads that can go on and off the long handle
storage2.JPG
garden tool storage shed
 
C Lundquist
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In a box on the front porch, in the back shed, in the garage, inside next to the back door, randomly left in the garden. We have multiples of everything.

Little house with a big garden in the city!
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." ~ J. Krishnamurti

 
Kenneth Elwell
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PLACES!, EVERYONE!!

With two, soon to be three greenhouses, two sheds, two garages, a walk-in cooler, and my truck, the tools still end up on the ground in the last place they were used.
There is/can be hope... some of these locations actually have homes (bins, hooks, cabinets, shelves) where tools and supplies GO rather than piling up or leaned haphazard(ous)ly against the wall.

We have multiples to account for time, spaces, people, tasks in progress, etc...

I am in the process of making a tiny shed out of an old shipping crate and a storm door. This will create another place nearer the distant third corner of the lot (a long triangle) where the big sheds are located in the other two corners. (...a year and a half long process...)
I am also clearing a spot to relocate the main hand-tool shed to a more central location and expand it to have a "carport" for wheelbarrows, barrels, and pails which always suffer from "the elements"... (...the much newer, bigger, better, WAAYYY more complicated idea, ensuring that it will be attempted before finishing the tiny shed.)
There may also end up being a "tool wall" or two for a set of shovel, fork, steel rake, spring rake, trowel, pruners; which would save some steps to/from the sheds. (...the simplest idea of them ALL, which almost guarantees it'll never happen.)

It seems silly and extravagant to double or quintuple up, since it's under two acres and mostly flat, but it can add up to a lot of walking... or putting things off... or using the wrong tool for the job (which can break tools or people).

Nails are sold by the pound, that makes sense.
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Carla Burke
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An idea that just reentered my mind, that I've tossed around for years, was finding a pulled-type golf club bag/ cart, for the various tools for different jobs. I can easily picture one with mops & brooms, one with shovels, rakes, & forks for the garden, another with barn cleaning supplies, etc. All could be fitted with "tool belts" to hold smaller tools, like pruning shears, hand trowels, gloves, spray bottles, etc. Each would have its own parking spot in the garage, so that as I head outside to tackle a project, I can just grab the appropriate cart, and wheel it out with me. Portable storage that doesn't require lifting or picking out & replacing each tool would, imho, make for much easier starting and cleaning up projects, without having to handle everything 3 or 4 times on top of the actual use time. I have the space - just have to find my carts!

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Kim Huse
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DOncha just LLOVVEe staged photos? Not a bug or speck of dirt in sight!

I store my tools either in the house, or  in the shed.  I wouldn't store them out where anyone can see them, because they will sprout human legs overnight and walk  off, never to be seen again.... I also do NOT store gloves, aprons or hats outside, bugs and spiders will make their homes in the folds, and I sure as heck don't want to disturb a wasps nest or get bitten by mistake by a spider
 
Aaron Yarbrough
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I have a mini shed on the exterior of our cabin that contains most of our garden tools
IMG_20220719_080937.jpg
mini-shed storage organiser tools
IMG_20220719_080949.jpg
mini-shed storage organiser tools
IMG_20220719_081028.jpg
mini-shed storage organiser sundries

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C Lundquist
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Oo good use for a pallet! I have a pallet left over from my last project, this would be perfect!

Little house with a big garden in the city!
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Alina Green
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What is that large metal thing (bottom left of the shelf unit) in storage3jpg and storage4jpg photos?

Looks like an industrial rocket stove...
 
Nancy Reading
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Morfydd St. Clair wrote:
Under the left counter will live the mobile rocket stove to stay out of the rain, under the right side will live some storage boxes,



So I suspect you're right! Looks rather smart I think

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Jenny Wright
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We store the big things in a backyard shed and in the garage but the little hand tools and other small items are the hardest to keep track of.

I found a solution that is finally working for me. My friend was getting rid of a plastic storage drawer. It ended up on my porch where it handily fits in drawer #1- gloves, drawer#2- hand spades, weeders, and shovels, and in drawer#3- hand clippers and other sharp items. And a basket on top where I can throw things if I'm just tossing something from the yard without actually walking up on the porch.

I think it works for me because I hardly ever finish a task to completion before a child calls for me to come help them with something in the house so I'm constantly throwing down my gloves and tools on the porch as I run inside. Things seldom made it back to the shed or garage because that's an extra few minutes that I needed/wanted to be doing something else.
 
Jenny Wright
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A couple of years ago my garden stool/kneeler thing broke and being very pregnant at the time, I desperately needed something to sit on out in the garden when weeding or harvesting stuff. Looking around in the garage I spied an old lunchbox-type cooler, just the right size to sit on and not too big to move around. It also happened to be just the right size to keep a bottle of water and my hand tools and gloves. It stayed out there all summer and was very convenient.

It's always nice to find things you can repurpose like that without any extra work.
 
Mary Cook
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For the garden shed, we did was is typical in our area, West Virginia: instead of topping the root cellar with concrete and dirt, we built a shed on top of it. Originally the plan was to put a vent in the floor on the shed and one in the door of the rootcellar; that never happened, the root cellar works adequately without ventilation. And doesn't get spiders or mice, just cave crickets. The garden shed on top got a wasp's nest a time or two, a wren's nest (but they used another one--I've read that wrens build two and pick one) and the real affliction--squirrels, who knock my stuff onto the floor and also rob my orchard. Other than that (we could probably close them out) the shed works fine, so there's an idea for the question, Where to put the garden shed.
I don't seem to use enough different tools to want to use the ideas here; what I use most is probably my shovel. If rain isn't predicted, I often leave it where I'm working. Same with the fork I use to turn compost. What I lose are the rake I use to collect leaves off our gravel lane, trowels--my new rule is to leave them near the entrance to each garden so at least I can glance at the entrances of my three garden patches and find one of my two trowels quickly (in theory). And the worst one is my small clippers, which sometimes get left in tall grass for weeks. I don't have a solution for that, except--when you buy new ones, choose ones with bright red handles!
 
Morfydd St. Clair
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Alina Green wrote:What is that large metal thing (bottom left of the shelf unit) in storage3jpg and storage4jpg photos?

Looks like an industrial rocket stove...



indeed!  It's the 20-L model from InStove.  I think the company is sadly defunct, but they considered their 60-L and 100-L versions to be industrial, and this one for more personal use.  A specific use case on their website was for missionaries - it can fit into checked baggage.  I did in fact get it to Europe in mine.

It's a nifty little stove!
 
R Scott
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"You must be the change you want to see in the world." "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." --Mahatma Gandhi
"Preach the Gospel always, and if necessary, use words." --Francis of Assisi.
"Family farms work when the whole family works the farm." -- Adam Klaus

 
Stacy Witscher
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Mary - The gardening apron has solved by gloves, pruners and hori hori knife issue (which I use instead of a trowel). I keep it hung up next to my front door.
60C1D07E-952A-45E0-B11B-CE13A0B90BF1.jpeg
keeping small tools tidy with gardening apron

Living a life that requires no vacation.

 
Anne Miller
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Some cute ideas I found on Pinterest today:


source


source


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source

Invasive plants are Earth's way of insisting we notice her medicines. Stephen Herrod Buhner
Everyone learns what works by learning what doesn't work. Stephen Herrod Buhner

 
I'm thinking about a new battle cry. Maybe "Not in the face! Not in the face!" Any thoughts tiny ad?
Free Seed Starting ebook!
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