Garden Bucket Caddy Carries the Day

When you have your hand-tools handy in a Fiskars^® Bucket Caddy, everything is ready to go when you are — so you don't have to make extra trips to the garden shed for the tools you need.

It's natural to just grab a trowel or a pair of snippers and some gloves when you head out into the garden, but as soon as you finish dead-heading the daisies, you'll discover you also need a cultivator to weed a flower bed, or perhaps a pair of loppers to cut back a lilac bush. These are pleasant distractions when the tools are at hand, and they always are when you have a tool bucket with you.

Plastic five-gallon buckets are sturdy garden partners. These buckets — available at builder's supply shops for just a few dollars — are great for carrying transplants into the garden and big enough to hold all the plastic containers and labels that accumulate when you are planting flowers.

Bucket caddies, which strap snugly around the outside of the bucket, make plastic buckets even more useful: these caddies are loaded with pockets like a carpenter's belt, but they will not weigh you down.

All five-gallon buckets are not the same: look for a tall bucket (15-16 inches), instead of one of the shorter ones (about 13 inches). Your tool caddy will fit just fine on a shorter bucket, but when the pockets are filled with tools and supplies they sag just a bit, and a taller bucket accommodates a little bit of stretch.

Clippers, a trowel or two, and a hand cultivator are essential tools for the pockets of your garden bucket.You may also want to stuff a couple of pairs of gardening gloves into one of the pockets — lightweight gloves for weeding, and heavier gloves for pruning.

If you make your own plant labels,bucket-caddy pockets are roomy enough to carry a supply of labels,and special pockets for markers let you fill them out on the spot as you plant.

Leave one pocket available for a bottle of cold water, and toss your gardening hat and larger tools (like hedge clippers, grass shears, and loppers), into the bucket itself.

If you're staking tomatoes, the bucket has room for a spool of twine, a supply of twist-ties, and a few ripe tomatoes or peppers.

It's easy to lose track of time in a garden. You dash out for a 10-minute round of weeding and discover, an hour later, that you have also pruned the roses and picked fresh beans, snipped the spent flowers off the zinnias, and inspected the mockingbird's nest in a pear tree. You'll be glad you tucked your camera (rather than your cell phone) into one of the pockets of your tool caddy. It will remind you to put down your trowel and take a picture, to make the moment last.