Favorite Garden Tools—Dibble

The holidays are closing in and you may have gardeners on your gift-giving list. Over the next few weeks I’ll share some of my favorite tools that gardening friends and family might find useful. Some of these tools are decades old and still function well. I keep most of these special tools in a box just inside the garage door so I can grab and go to the garden.

I call it a dibble. Others refer to it as dibber or dibbler.

A dibble makes holes in the ground for planting seeds, seedlings and small bulbs. I used it this week to transplant lettuce seedlings and cornflowers from small cells. It was easy to seat the plants in the perfectly sized holes. It also worked well for ranuculus and shallots recently.

My dibble has a weight and heft in my hand. It easily slips into my loose garden soil. On Amazon or garden catalogs you’ll find metal and wood combos and silly plastic dibbles. I saw a beechwood dibble which had an antique feel. I envisioned a New England farmer in colonial days using his dibble to plant his crops.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about dibbles:
The dibber was first recorded in Roman times and has remained mostly unchanged since. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, farmers would use long-handled dibbers of metal or wood to plant crops. One person would walk with a dibber making holes, and a second person would plant seeds in each hole and fill it in. It was not until the Renaissance that dibbers became a manufactured item, some made of iron for penetrating harder soils and clay.

I like my dibble. It was a gift from my husband. I like how it feels in my hand and the memories that come when I use it. There’s a similar one at Gardener’s Edge and less expensive options on Amazon. Or check Etsy for wooden dibbles.

An antique garden dibble.