Russian Gardening Tools

‘The Garden tools of the proletariat will rise and overthrow the bourgeoisie with their flymo’s and strimmers’ according to the photographer of ‘Garden Tools by tim ellis’ under CC BY-NC 2.0. So not quite Russian gardening tools but the hammer and sickle have there uses in revolutions and gardens.

Uses of a Hammer

• I have a double skinned boundary wall for alpine and rock plants. A rouge buddleia seedling with big roots pushed part of the wall down and my wife needed a hammer to clean up the stone to rebuild the wall.
• I do the easy planting and used a hammer to get a tree post and climber pole deep enough for the intended support.
• Meanwhile my wife was laying rolls of logs between the concrete path and the herbaceous bed. To partially bury the log roll she used the hammer to crush down the stray rubble foundations.
• I use drink to get hammered but that is another story.

Uses for a Sickle

• Apart from cutting off my head it is hard to see what use the sickle will be, although the resulting blood can feed the plants.
• Long grass, old stalks and stems can be tidied up in one fell swoop or sweep of a sharp tool like the one pictured.
• I do have a Japanese weeding sickle that I was given as a present and it does a good weed and rooting out job.
• I have seen some other names for a sickle including a scythette, a grass hook and a hand scythe. A weed slasher is a tool of a different ilk.

To ‘Build a dry wall’ you may need yon hammer