Take-Apart Shears: The Perfect $10 Stocking Stuffer for Gardeners and Cooks

Harvesting basil in the June kitchen garden with my new favorite scissors.

Realization of the Day:

A few months ago, I wrote a long post about pesto and my 2011 banner basil crop, put a bunch of photos together, and then never got around to actually publishing it all. Here's the short version: That bad luck with basil I had in May? It eventually turned out to be really good. Like well over 5 pounds of basil from 10 plants good. Yes! (You'll find all my basil growing posts here.)

Realization #2:

There's nothing like a little early December snowstorm to remind you of just how much you took all that fresh basil for granted.

When I was getting ready to post my Holiday Gift Ideas for Bakers and Cooks: 16 Favorite Kitchen Essentials (Most Under $25) this year, Joe asked me if I had added anything new to the list. I said no, I'm still loving and using all the same great stuff. But I was wrong. I'd forgotten about my new scissors (and my awesome Oxo food mill).

I bought these Fiskars Take-Apart Softgrip Garden Shears ($10.15) back in early spring, and hardly a day goes by when I don't use them at least once in the kitchen or garden.

They're called herb & veggie garden shears on the package, but Fiskars also makes identical, general use take-apart shears without the softgrip, and that link is full of glowing reviews from people who use theirs to cut up everything from plastic blister packages and fabric to the fins off fish (some of them for over 20 years).

I probably have a dozen pairs of cheap scissors scattered around the farm that I've used for pretty much anything you can think of over the years (I love scissors!), but now these are the the ones I always want to reach for.

The stainless-steel, serrated blades are heavy duty and sharp, but of course what's best about them is that they quickly come apart for easy and thorough cleaning. How cool is that? You can even put them in the dishwasher.

If there are gardeners and cooks on your holiday list, these dandy $10 take-apart shears are sure to be a useful, long lasting, and much appreciated gift. If you're buying them for yourself and you don't live alone, you might want to order an extra pair. In fact, I think this is just what my hunky farmguy needs in his stocking this year—maybe with his name written on them.

© FarmgirlFare.com, where it's never too early to start planning (and dreaming about) next year's bumper basil crop.

Five Years Ago Today: A Little Scuffle in the Garden

Thai pink egg tomato patch after about three minutes with the scuffle hoe.

Back on June 30, 2006, a month and a half after declaring myself to be Baby Cary's mother, I declared my love for the scuffle hoe in this post: How To Use a Scuffle Hoe to Weed the Vegetable Garden - and Why I Love Mine So Much.

It was far from love at first sight for me and my scuffle hoe, but the hard won feelings of affection have endured, and after all these years, I'm still enamored with it.

This little old garden tool isn't put into service that often (mostly because the weeds in my garden seem to go from two inches high to two feet high in about an hour), but it always does its one job well.

Do you use a scuffle hoe? Any tips, techniques, or amusing stories to tell?

© FarmgirlFare.com, where we're very big on mulching but are still always needing to do some weeding.

How To Use a Scuffle Hoe to Weed the Vegetable Garden - and Why I Love Mine So Much

My Thai pink egg tomato patch before. . .

And about 3 minutes after.

Years ago, I read a magazine article in which several well known gardeners named their favorite gardening tool. Someone, I forget who it was, said theirs was the scuffle hoe, which is sometimes called a stirrup hoe.

They went on to describe how it did a superb job of weeding with hardly any effort; you simply pushed and pulled the hoe just under the soil surface and voila! all your pesky weeds were severed at the base, while your surrounding plants and their roots went undisturbed.

I immediately longed for one. The ones I found for sale were pricey. I smacked the longing into submission and convinced myself that my life was totally complete despite its lack of a scuffle hoe.

Fast forward a few years to my first spring, complete with giant garden, in Missouri. I'm wandering around a small hardware store that's having a going out of business sale, and I spy a couple of scuffle hoes. They're simply made, don't even have a brand name, but are under five dollars each. Sold!

I take one home, attack a small patch of weeds with the oh-so-easy, push-pull motion, and watch in disbelief as my new wonder tool fails to do absolutely anything. I can practically hear the weeds and the salesperson laughing at me.

Fast forward several more years. For some reason I can no longer recall, I decide to dust off my scuffle hoe and give it another chance. That famous gardener had raved about it. If he was stranded on a desert island, all he wanted was that stupid, useless hoe.

And then I figured out why.

More below. . .

I Can't Live Without. . . My Oriental Garden Tool!

Ho-Mi, E-Z Digger, Korean Hand Cultivator: It's Wonderful Whatever You Call It

I often mention Pinetree Garden Seeds in Maine, as I have been happily buying from them for over 10 years. The quality of their seeds is excellent, and their prices are very reasonable. They specialize in vegetable seeds for the home gardener, and most seed packets cost less than a dollar. In their catalog they state, "Since we deal only with home gardeners, we don't worry about shipping or machine harvesting characteristics. What we do worry about is flavor, space, efficiency, beauty, and uniqueness." Sounds good to me.

While I have purchased everything from cutting celery seeds to strawberry plants from their informative print catalog (they also have an online catalog), by far the best items I have ordered were in the Garden and Kitchen Products sections. These things actually changed my life.

One of these things is my Oriental Garden Tool. Since buying mine a dozen years ago, I have seen them for sale in various places with various names, but Pinetree still simply calls it an Oriental Garden Tool (catalog item # H151) and their price of $13.95 can't be beat. (For purchases up to $19.99, shipping is only $3.75.)

This centuries-old ingenious device does it all: weeding, opening and closing furrows, digging holes for seedlings. It is pretty much the only hand tool I use in the garden. One year I planted, hilled up, and harvested 150 feet of potatoes with it. It conforms to your hand and range of motion so easily that other trowels suddenly feel clumsy. I misplaced mine once, and I felt so helpless without it that I nearly had a replacement shipped to me by overnight delivery. It is that wonderful.



Pinetree say it's "an all time favorite tool of ours. The blade is 7 inches long and convex, like that of a plow with a sharp point broadening to a width of 3 inches. Terrific for digging because the sharp point cuts deep, but the smooth surface of the blade gently pushes the soil to the surface to trench rows. Great for digging holes for plants and bulbs. Hand-forged and designed for right-handed people."

It does many of the same jobs that a hoe does, but you can do them while kneeling. So if back or sciatic problems prevent you from bending over and using a hoe, this is most definitely the tool for you.

Words really don't do justice to my Oriental Garden Tool. On top of everything else, it is exactly one foot long, so you can also use it to do all your measuring while you're planting. I highly recommend one for any type of gardener. It would also make a great gift for all your gardening friends and family members.

Click here and here and here for a few other things I can't live without.

© Copyright FarmgirlFare.com, the foodie farm blog where Farmgirl Susan shares recipes, stories, and photos from her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres—and sometimes it's the littlest things, like a simple tool, that can make the biggest difference in the garden.