Storing tools in winter
The days are getting shorter, so there’s less and less to do in the garden. It’s therefore time to start preparing to put your garden tools away for the winter. Not only will your tools last longer if they’re well looked after – but who wants to spend time next spring, before you’ve even started gardening, removing dirt and rust, and cleaning and sharpening your tools? All of this is part of the storage process.
Cleaning your tools
The first step is to ensure your garden tools are clean. Ideally, you should always clean your tools after use – which means the first step is already done, or at least it’s much easier to manage.
Start by brushing off any coarse dirt from the tool. A lawnmower, in particular, that isn’t cleaned thoroughly and regularly can have heavily caked-on grass clippings on the underside. If necessary, you can even use a high-pressure washer on heavily soiled garden tools. Make sure it isn’t set too high and doesn’t strip away any paintwork or damage parts of the tool. With a lawnmower in particular, you should take care not to clog the blades too much, either with the high-pressure washer or with small stones dislodged from the dirt.
Using a sponge, a little soap and warm water, you can tackle any remaining dirt and clean your tools thoroughly.
You can remove dirt from saws and files using the saw and file brush. Resin can be easily removed with a resin remover. Simply spray it on – and wipe it off. This is a particularly simple way to clean saws and saw blades. After cleaning with resin remover, you should apply oil to neutralise the resin remover.
Barnel offers the B-Clean cleaning spray, designed specifically for secateurs, which reliably removes resin residues and sticky tree sap from secateurs. The same applies here: neutralise with oil after cleaning.
It is best to clean your garden tools after every use.
Check tools and repair any damage
The second step is to check the tools for any damage and repair it. Otherwise, minor areas of rust in particular tend to ‘flare up’ over the winter. Play it safe and inspect your garden tools thoroughly! Stainless steel tools are usually completely problem-free. Tools such as carbon steel saws, on the other hand, require considerably more attention.
If any parts, joints or bolts are firmly rusted in place, you should first loosen them and remove the rust. Weicon Rust Remover and Contact Spray is a reliable aid for this.
You can remove small patches of rust using a rust eraser; larger patches can be removed, for example, with a wire brush or a fan-shaped sander. If you do not have a straight grinder, you can also attach the fan-shaped sander to a standard domestic drill. You should have some experience with sanding before attempting this.
You should also look after the handles of your tools. Sand down the handles, which are subject to wear and tear during gardening, using fine-grit sandpaper and then oil them with linseed oil. Linseed oil dries slowly, allowing it to penetrate deep into the wood, and once hardened, it acts as an eco-friendly wood preservative.
A wide variety of tools are used for removing rust.
Sharpening tools
As there are often no other tasks in the garden to keep you busy in autumn, this is the ideal time to sharpen your tools so that they are in perfect working order again come spring. A sharp tool is always safer than a blunt one – simply because you need to exert less force, you can work with the tool much more precisely. Depending on the type of tool, there are various sharpening systems available. The sharpening set for loppers and secateurs consists of a coarse sharpening file and a fine file – the set also includes a small can of Ballistol spray.
You can sharpen axes and hatchets using the Gränsfors sharpening file for axes or the Gränsfors diamond sharpening file for axes. The diamond file features a coarse 230-grit surface for rough sharpening and a fine 400-grit surface for finishing. Both files can be used either with water or dry. If you want to ensure precise sharpening angles whilst keeping things simple, then the KME axe sharpening system is the right choice for you. This system makes sharpening axes particularly easy, even without any prior experience. Naniwa whetstones are particularly well suited to garden shears. They have one side with a concave shape and one side with a convex shape.
Use the coarse side of the diamond sharpening file for the initial sharpening, and the fine side for finishing.
If you’d like to get started with knife and tool sharpening using a versatile set, the combination whetstone set – which includes a folding sharpener and oil – is the perfect way to enter the world of sharpening. As well as the whetstone, this set also includes a non-slip mat and a general-purpose sharpener (coarse). A small bottle of Sinensis camellia oil completes the set.
Lubricating tools
The next step is to oil all metal parts thoroughly. Do not use mineral oils for this; instead, vegetable oils such as camellia oil (Japanese camellia oil or Sinensis camellia oil) are ideal, as is Ballistol, which is based on medically pure white oil. These oils are biodegradable and therefore safe to use. By oiling the surfaces, you protect them from unnecessary corrosion during the winter. This prevents water from penetrating the metal so easily – the layer of oil displaces the water.
Store in a dry, frost-free place
The rule is: anywhere that’s dry and frost-free is fine. To ensure that the tools you’ve prepared for storage really do survive the winter unscathed, you should keep them in a dry place that isn’t too cold. This could be the arbour, the tool shed or even the cellar. The garage is also a suitable winter home for your tools. Under no circumstances should you store your tools outdoors.
A dry shed is ideal for storing many garden tools during the winter.
Even if you don’t have a cellar or a garden shed, the space under the eaves above the patio is not sufficiently sheltered. If necessary, use moving boxes and store them in a room where there is still some space and where the boxes won’t be in the way.
Otherwise, damp weather conditions will cause unnecessary damage to your tools – even if they are properly lubricated!
If you have cordless tools, you should always try to store them at a temperature well above 0 degrees. The lithium-ion batteries used almost exclusively today are generally quite low-maintenance. Unlike the batteries commonly used in the past, they have a significantly lower self-discharge rate – furthermore, they do not need to, and should not, always be charged to 100 per cent of their capacity. Older batteries suffered from the memory effect and should only be charged once they were almost completely flat – and should always be fully charged. Lithium-ion batteries, on the other hand, are best kept within a charge range of 20 per cent to 80 per cent and do not always need to be fully charged.
Once you have stored all your equipment away, do remember to drain your irrigation system and protect it from frost!
