Looking to start gardening? You need tools to get started with your home gardening. A variety of gardening tools are available to make gardening easier, but some tools are essentials that you cannot really live without.
What are the basic gardening tools that you need to start gardening?
Here are the essential gardening tools that you must have in your gardener’s shed.
Shovel
For any kind of gardening and earthwork, you need a shovel. A shovel is a spade-like with a broad blade and typically upturned sides, used for moving soil, sand, snow, etc.
A spade-shaped shovel comes handy for multiple activities — planting and transplanting plants, edging your garden, mixing soil and compost, and many more gardening activities.
Rakes
A rake is a broom for outside use. The word rake originates from the meaning to collect or to heap.
In horticulture and gardening, a heavy-duty bow rake is a tool with a toothed bar fixed transversely to a handle. A fan-shaped leaf rake for collecting grass, leaves, etc. has tines fixed to a handle. A garden rake has short, rigid metal tines designed for breaking up or smoothing out soil.
Grass Rake 
Bow Rake
Hoe
Hoes are used for digging and mixing soil, and help in weeding by breaking weed roots. Hoes have been in use since ancient times as a versatile agricultural and horticultural tool. It has been used to dig soil, shape soil, clear soil, clear weeds and harvest root crops. Farmers and gardeners use hoes to dig furrows and shallow trenches or beds for planting.
Draw Hoes: With a spade-like metal blade, these hoes are used for weeding, pulling out or scrapping unwanted vegetation, and also for making soil trenches and beds.
Digging Hoes: These hoes are used to dig the soil before seeding and plantation. It’s also used in harvesting.
Reciprocating Hoes: With special moving blades used to scrub the soil, these hoes are used for removing weeds and unwanted plants.
Flat Hoes: These hoes are designed for flattening the soil through push-pull actions. Its blades are parallel to the surface. These are used for weeding and soil preparation.
Triangle Hoes: With a small triangular blade and a long handle, this tool (also known as warren hoes) is ideal for weeding between narrow areas and rows when the weeds are young. The triangular blade makes them ideal for tight spots. They also work for making furrows.
Hand Hoes: Smaller hoes with small handles are designed for working in smaller spaces with the gardener.
Hori-Hori Knife
The “hori hori” is a Japanese garden knife with a unique blend of digging and cutting features. The Japanese named it “Hori”, which means “to dig” in Japanese. With this versatile Japanese garden knife, you can dig, transplant, saw, cut, and even measure soil depth for planting bulbs. A hori-hori knife, also referred to as a “soil knife” or a “weeding knife”, is a heavy serrated steel blade for gardening jobs. It has sharp blades on both sides and a semi-sharp point at the end. These knives also have markings to act as a measuring scale.
Hose & Watering Can
Plants need water. When you have a garden, you don’t want to water your plants with a bucket and a mug. You need a watering can to make watering a joyful activity. For a large garden, your need a hose with spray nozzle for easy watering.
Wheel Barrow & Bucket
For carrying your gardening tools and items, you need a wheel barrow or at least a bucket. It will make carrying your tools, plants, compost, etc. much easier. Prepare for the physical lifting that’s part of gardening.
Hand Trowel
A hand trowel is a useful tool for digging holes to plant or transplant smaller plants. You can also use them for digging soil around your plants to improve aeration and other purposes.
Soil Knife
A soil knife is a hybrid of a hand trowel and a serrated knife. Like Kori-Kori, a soil knife is used to cut plants roots, weed out stubborn weeds and dig hard soil. It can help separate plants for transplanting.
Garden Scissors & Shears
Scissors (or shears) are used for trimming and pruning your garden plants. You can use garden scissors for trim plants and herbs, cut flowers and much more. Heavy-duty household scissors work well for most gardening tasks. After working with an infected plant, do not forget to sterilize your shears with a dilute bleach solution.
Hand Pruner
When you need to trim hedges and plants, a garden scissor or household scissor isn’t up to the task. You need sturdier and bigger hand pruners to trim woody plants and hedges.
Pruning Saw
When you are dealing with a tree branch or plants that your hand pruner cannot handle, you need a pruning saw. Garden saws are used for trimming tree branches, cutting plants and more.