Gardening for Arthritis Tools – Product Review and Contest
When Troy-Bilt sent me several gardening tools at the beginning of the summer to review, I had no idea I would be getting a diagnosis of severe degenerative arthritis and how a tool might truly make a difference in my garden for my health. I am very tough on tools – I chew them up and spit them out – and below are four gardening tools I reviewed from Troy-Bilt that I’ve used a grading scale of A, B, or C with a mention if I feel they are good for gardening if you have arthritis or another condition. If I find a tool that’s an F, I’m not even going to share that horror with you, so it has to be a C or above in my rating system. At the end of this post please leave a comment letting me know what your toughest garden problem has been this season for a chance to win a tool give-away contest (I hope to select a few problems and help solve them in upcoming posts).
Premium Garden Weed Remover – $34.99
I liked this tool (see top photo) and give it an A- rating. It was a fantastic tool for grass and dandelion removal. Without a doubt it would be perfect if you have arthritis and/or another medical condition that prevents you from bending or lifting. Easy to use, all you do is insert the claws into the soil and push down on the pedal, then step on the foot pedal for leverage and pull the handle towards you, it extracts a weed lickety-split. When weeding in heavy clay soil, I have noticed that this brings up a lot of soil with the root structure.
Premium Garden Rake $6.99
I found the premium garden rake to be graded, perhaps, at a C-. The handle metal was slick, therefore tough to grip tight. I would not recommend this tool for someone who has a health problem related to physically gripping tightly. It does indeed rake well, but only if you have a rubber glove on. Not my favorite.
Comfort Classic Anvil Pruner $19.99
This was a good tool to use to trim small, but tough branches. I liked it and give it an A- rating because it did a fine job on my blue spruce pine out back. I would use this tool in place of a lighter pruner for shrubs and tough perennial stems. Also, it was easy to grip and cut very well, thereby making it a good tool to use for snipping if you had weakened strength in your hands.
Troy Bilt Comfort Classic Anvil Lopper $59.99
This lopper was very tough and very easy to operate – I give it an A! I only squeezed it lightly to lop off my crab apple branches. This is good if you have health issues or arthritis because you do not have to use as much force to cut through heavy sticks and limbs. I think this would be a good investment for most gardeners who have shrubs and trees that need regular pruning.
CONTEST BELOW!!!!
AND THE WINNER OF THE CONTEST IS — Lynn Hunt of The Dirt Diaries. Congratulations Lynn!!!!
If you would like to win these gardening tools in the below contest, simply leave a comment below describing your toughest garden problem this season. I will select a totally random winner this Sunday 8/30 and will have the Troy-Bilt company send out all of these tools so you can try them too.
Special thanks to Troy-Bilt for sending out the tools so I could run it through the Shawna-Marator Tool Review Machine. I was happy that most of them would work for people who might have a health condition and have trouble squeezing a cutting tool as they were all easy to squeeze. #nevergiveup #arthritis
I had a back injury a year ago so keeping up on the weeding has been horrible! My garden looks like a mess but I try to stay focused & do what I can on the days my body allows more.
Gardening in Az tough ground… Need lots of compost and fresh dirt… Getting my 4 girls involved and helping (after my husband of 18 yrs left us 4 yrs ago!)… I pay some neighbor boys to help sometimes too…
My toughest garden problem this season has been keeping up with the watering….It’s been way too hot here. If I water, the weeds take over, if I weed, the watering goes by the wayside……YIKES!
The problem I have in the garden is the same as yours. I have arthritis in my spine and hips complicated by some neurological problems that have lessened my hand strength. Raised planting beds help, but I’ve had to cut way back on my gardens simply because I can’t do as much bending, lifting and pulling that needs to be done. I’d buy the weeder in a heartbeat.
While weeding for my elderly parents on a humid day, I overdid it and felt ill when I stood back up. How nice it would have been to stand and weed! At home, the worst problem is still weeds, and the one I despise is spurge.
Toughest problems this year? Johnson Grass and too much rain.
At this time of year it is a great number of weeds wanting to spread their seed. I have been fighting with oxalis especially and many others I don’t know the names of. As I am getting older by the minute it is getting harder on my back to bend over. These would be great! Thanks for the chance! 🙂
Blessings on you!
i don’t use pesticides in my garden. The toughest problem I have had is keeping bugs off my plants. The drought also caused me some problems. I was unable to grow plants in one area because the tree was using the water in the soil.
Recovering from an illness, I find that I am still building my strength up. Unfortunately, there are tasks that I simply cannot accomplish in my current condition — in other words, there’s no getting it half-done. Right now, the premium garden weed remover would be a big help because — avoiding the stooping, kneeling, getting back up and moving to the next spot — I could work through large areas of the garden without overextending myself.
Gripping hoes, spades, etc. is almost impossible for me. As a 73-year-old widow, I literally “feel your pain” and am so sorry this has attacked you at such a young age. I haven’t given up my gardening either! One of the things I discovered is the gray sponge tube used for insulating pvc pipe. Pieces of this tubing cut to size and attached to tools with duct tape make gripping so much easier. I’ve been able to keep some of my current gardening tools that I just can’t give up.
Instead of “widow”, I mean to type ” fellow arthritic”. Will definitely be getting that Comfort Classic Anvil Pruner!
They all sound great. O.K. mobility and ease of use are important factors for many. Speaking as one who is vertically challenged (short), they look they would really be awesome.
At 70, I am having a more difficult time weeding in my garden. Bending down is more difficult each month.
With arthritis in my knees it is impossible to kneel. So once I am down, I scoot around on my butt! Then I awkwardly get up- but I will not give in to the pain of arthritis because I love my garden!
biggest challenge has been lack of water this August, makes it difficult to weed, plant, sow more seeds. Ironically, second biggest challenge has been mosquitoes, have so many that it makes it difficult to get in the garden even though I sprayed myself!
We had a very rainy beginning to the summer and the weeds took over everything. I am still trying to catch up. It seems that as soon as I clean up one area, the part I did previously needs some tending to again. I can’t win!
My toughest garden challenge this season was just getting out there to garden, the mosquitoes made the spring and summer a real task!
Garden problems? Oh where to start! I fell and had a severe break of my arm months ago. I still don’t have use of my arm, so my garden is completely overrun with weeds. I also fractured my spine during my fall and these would be great tools to help get the garden back under control!
Arthritis especially severe in hands – would love to try these!
I’d say my toughest garden problem this year would be keeping up with the weeding. During the summer months, I tend to travel and go on vacation. Boy, what a difference a week can make when it comes to weeds. I feel like they need such a small amount of time to take over. I have many different garden beds so when one looks great, the others always still need work. Crab grass is currently creeping in on my rose garden. I need to go take care of that before it gets out of control. It’s difficult to motivate myself to get out there when the weather is hot, heavy and humid. The end results of a happy garden is definitely worth all the backbreaking work though 🙂 Someone definitely needs to invent a garden robot that weeds the garden for you while you do other more enjoyable tasks (like a Roomba!) haha I would pay good money for that. Thank you for hosting this giveaway, have a wonderful week!
My husband had unexpected major surgery in June so I have had to improvise handling some of his chores. (He still isn’t cleared to do heavy garden work.) Instead of using a weed eater, I’ve had to do a lot more weeding by hand. Sure could use some of those super Troy-Bilt tools!
I would love to win tools that help with garden chores. Garden chores are amplified as you know when you have any health issues or injuries. I seem plagued with them especially joint issues, back injuries and now limited bending. So any tool that can help especially with weeding, pruning or tidying is a plus for me.
Protecting my plants from the deer is always a challenge.
Arthristis in my lower back makes bending over for any extended period of time really painful and difficult, I tend to sit down on the ground to do most of my weeding, planting and harvesting, hope my knees hold up for a while! 🙂
I have some arthritis in my knees so bending my knees is not fun. My biggest problem is weeds.
I’m having a hard time keeping up with the weeding.
Living in Florida, the rain makes it impossible to keep the yard mowed. My yard gets so soggy that I have a hard time pushing my mower.
Spider mites and powdery mildew has been an issue this summer. We have had a much dryer year than usual. I’ve been spraying with a DIY spray made from pure castile liquid soap and water for the mites. Which seems to help.
My greatest challenge this season? Heat and drought that’s caused large fissures in the clay soil making it difficult to navigate my way to the garden, due to my wonky hip. When I told my brother that I was going to have to get a hip replacement because of degenerative osteoarthritis, he said our entire family needed to come to terms with the fact we’d all be bionic from the waist down before all was said and done. Arthritis seems to run in the family (or limp, is more like it). I call it my “hop along heritage”.
It’s a mystery to me how nut grass and crab grass grow so miserably well in the low desert with little to no water! Tools like these would help my husband and I get the roses back to grass free. The worse my CRPS spreads the less I do anymore but I never thought about tools like these! Her is restarting our veggie garden after fire ants destroyed our last one. I just discovered this blog so I am extremely excited to read ideas on the subject! Thank you for hosting this contest. It’s how I found you! Best of luck to everyone!
Fungal jungle! Cool wet spring and early summer many all kinds of fungus. Bleh.
My greatest challenge this season has been keeping weedy grass at bay. All of my borders and beds were sodbusted and you know how grass is….for such a shallow-rooted thing it can be difficult to eradicate. Add to it a bout of ankle bursitis and….ow! I nearly plotzed when I saw that weeder! The ankle thingy has caused much drama for my hips and knees, as I continually shift my weight off my ankle. That would be a great tool for that.
My biggest challenge has been weeding! I have property next to the railroad tracks & Fermilab. I have strange exotic & toxic weeds that come over into my yard. I have a few medical conditions that make pulling those weeds very difficult. I have Lymphedema in my left arm… Not supposed to over work it, plus I need to be very careful of bug bites (& bugs like the thick weeds!) I had a spider bite that developed into a serious infection because of my compromised Lymphetic system. I also have a rare rheumatism that causes arthritic type of pain in my joints. Woe is me & my garden?
My hardest challenge this year has been the thorny weeds growing up in the rocks, very limited access to get to them!
I find that my greatest challenge is trying to catch up with weeding all the Canadian thistle that have invaded my yard. I have to get on my hands and knees to pull the weeds, but that only lasts for a short time before my knees ache and then it is so hard to get up when there is nothing close by to grab onto.
CONGRATULATIONS LYNN HUNT! You are the randomly selected winner for the contest!!!
Wow that looks handy. Anyway, my grandfather used to tidy out our garden in the house. He usually do all of that on his own. He is very healty at his 70s. So he has planted a mango tree that has been so big that began to branched outside to the road. Last month we cut a little bit so it will be more convenience for cars to get though because sometimes, mangos will drop down and hit some of the cars. He has been on his bed all day nowadays. I hope he could get better.
I need some i can do good work