My Adapted Garden Tools
with simple build notes, from an old shop teacher

Thirty-two years of telling teenagers "measure twice, cut once" has to be good for something. Here's what I've done to my tools and my garden so a shaky hand and a stiff back can keep up. None of it is fancy. Most of it came from the hardware store and the scrap pile. An occupational therapist can give you more ideas than I've got, and if your doctor will send you to one, go.

A word on safety first. Parkinson's and its medicines can make you dizzy when you stand up quick. Get up slow, hold on to something solid, and count to five before you take a step. And keep your sharp tools sharp. A dull blade takes more force, and more force with a shaky hand is how you get hurt.

1. Built-up handles

A skinny handle is hard to hold when your fingers are stiff. A fat one is easy. The cheapest way to make a handle fat is foam pipe insulation, the gray tube with the slit down the side that you put on water pipes under the house.

• It comes sized by the pipe it fits. Take your tool to the store and try the handle in the tube before you buy. You want it snug.
• Cut a piece the length of the handle with a utility knife. Open the slit, push the handle in, and close it up.
• Wrap it tight with electrical tape every couple of inches, or with one long spiral of tape from end to end. Duct tape works but gets gummy in the Georgia sun.
• For an even bigger grip, put a second size of tube over the first.

I've done my trowel, my hand fork, my weeder, the rake, the hoe, and Alma's good kitchen spoon, which she pretends not to like.

2. A little weight

My occupational therapist told me that a little extra weight on a tool can calm a tremor some. It's true for me, though not for everybody. On my trowel I taped three big steel fender washers on the handle up near the blade, under the foam, where you can't see them. Try it and see. Don't overdo it, or your wrist will tell you about it that evening.

3. A kneeler with arms

Getting down to the ground is easy. Getting back up is where the trouble is. A kneeler with tall arms on each side gives you something solid to push up on. Flip it over and it's a low bench. You can buy them, but I built mine in an afternoon.

1. On each side board, mark a hand-hold near one end: a slot about four and a half inches long and an inch and a quarter wide, a couple of inches in from the end. Drill a hole at each end of the slot and cut between them with a jigsaw. Sand it smooth. Your hands will thank you.
2. Glue and screw the top between the two sides at the end away from the hand-holds, so the hand-holds stick up above it when you kneel.
3. Glue and screw the stretcher between the sides near the open end to keep it from racking.
4. Round over every edge with sandpaper. Paint it two coats. I painted mine John Deere green so I can find it in the grass.
5. Glue the foam pad onto the top with outdoor adhesive.

To use it: kneel on the pad, and when it's time to get up, put a hand on each side, walk one foot forward, and push up slow. Flip it over, and you've got a seat right at weeding height.

4. Waist-high raised beds

The best thing I ever built for my back. I have two along the south side of the greenhouse, and my fall tomatoes are in them now. I can work them standing up, or sitting in the rolling seat, without bending at all.

• Size: about 30 inches tall, three feet wide and six feet long. Three feet wide means you can reach the middle from either side without stretching. Make it narrower if you can only get at one side.
• Wood: I used cedar 2x10s, three boards high, because it lasts and I didn't want treated lumber next to my tomatoes. Four-by-four posts in the corners, sunk a foot in the ground.
• The cap: a 2x6 laid flat around the top edge. You can lean on it, set your tools on it, or sit on it.
• Filling it: that's a lot of dirt. I put about a foot of broken brick and gravel in the bottom for drainage and to save on soil, then good topsoil mixed half and half with compost.
• Run a soaker hose along the top before you plant, and you can water with the turn of one spigot.

5. The rolling seat

I bought a garden seat on wheels at the hardware store, the kind with a tray under the seat for tools, and fixed it up some:

• Put on bigger wheels so it rolls on grass and mulch, not just on the walk.
• Added a short backrest from a scrap of oak and two angle brackets.
• Screwed a coffee can to the side for my pruners and gloves, and a smaller one for my afternoon pills and a bottle of water.
• Glued a strip of rubber stair tread on the seat so I don't slide.

Set it so it won't roll before you sit down or stand up. I learned that one the hard way, and the azaleas broke my fall.

6. Odds and ends

• Ratcheting pruners cut a thick cane in a few small squeezes instead of one hard one.
• A long-handled grabber, the kind for picking up trash, for the weeds I can't reach and the pruners I drop.
• A hose nozzle with a lock so I don't have to hold the trigger. And a hose reel on wheels.
• Labels I can read. My handwriting has gotten small, the way it does with PD. So I stamp my plant labels with a set of metal letter punches on strips cut from an aluminum pie plate. They last for years.
• A kitchen timer in my shirt pocket, set for my next dose. In the garden you lose track of time, and with Sinemet, time matters.
• Gloves a size big, so they go on easy.

If you've rigged up something clever for your own garden, I'd like to hear about it. I'll put the best ones on this page with your first name.