I spent years weeding on my hands and knees with a hand fork, which is a great way to get intimate with your soil and a terrible way to spend an afternoon. A hoe changes the math entirely. Stand up, swing, and the weeds are gone at the root, row after row, without bending over once. For clearing a vegetable bed or maintaining a flower border, nothing else comes close. ...
A good garden trowel is the tool you reach for more than any other in the garden. Planting, weeding, transplanting, mixing soil in pots, cleaning out cracks in the patio. A trowel does all of it. But most trowels sold at big-box stores are stamped steel with plastic handles that snap off by the second season. A proper hand tool costs more upfront and lasts twenty years. I tested seven garden hand tools and trowels. Forged stainless steel, cast-aluminum ergonomic designs, good old carbon steel. I dug in clay, in sandy loam, in rocky ground. I left them in the rain overnight. I drove them through root systems that would break lesser tools. Some bent. A few impressed me. The ones below are the keepers. ...