A Beginner’s Guide to Cleaning and Disinfecting Your Garden Tools

Garden tools are a must-have for all gardeners. Cleaning and maintaining these instruments is essential for keeping plants healthy. Working with dirty or unmaintained tools not only requires more effort when performing plant care tasks, but they may even spread disease among plants. 

I’m a thrifty gardener and love finding ways to save money in the garden, but the things I don’t skimp on are my tools. For me, those include a high-quality hori-hori, hand pruners, a spade, and a weeding rake. A pair of Felco hand pruners are worth their weight in gold – they’re a true buy-it-for-life investment and have a lifetime guarantee.  

Taking a little time to maintain them will save you time, money, and frustration down the road. Here’s a beginner’s guide to cleaning and disinfecting your garden tools. 

Make it Easy to Clean Tools Often

The best way to ensure your garden instruments last as long as possible is to clean them often. Ideally, you should aim to clean them after each use. But honestly, this isn’t practical for every gardener in peak season. You should commit to cleaning them at least once a week. Try pairing it with another weekly task, like weeding, mowing the lawn, or pet waste pick up. But if you’ve been working with diseased plants, it’s imperative to clean them immediately before moving to any other plants. 

I suggest keeping a small cleaning station in an area you frequently see, like near a spigot or the entrance to your garden, not in a shed or hidden area where it won’t be seen. Stock your station with antibacterial soap (it doesn’t need to be fancy – dish, lava, or castile soap will do), a sponge, wire wool, an old toothbrush, and a rag. 

Remove Rust

If your tools have rusted, they’re likely not cutting as well as they used to, and their hinges aren’t as smooth anymore. If you’ve accidentally left your favorite shears outside one too many times, fear not. Rust is not the end of the world, and it can even be easily removed!

All you need is vinegar, a scour pad, and a little bit of elbow grease. Let your rusty tool soak in vinegar for 24 hours, and then scour off any remaining rust with your scour pad. Dry and oil them, and then you’re good to go! 

Lather, Rinse, Oil, Repeat

To properly clean your tools, mix a little antibacterial soap and water in a bucket. Use a hose or dry brush to remove dirt, then dip them in the soapy water. Scrub them with a sponge, steel wool, or toothbrush, then give them a final rinse with your hose. If your pruning shears are sticky with sap, a dissolvant like the FELCO 981 spray helps to remove it. 

Don’t skip the drying step after cleaning—this helps prevent rust and keep your tools sharp. Use an old rag or towel to remove rust-causing water. As an extra measure, I like to leave mine out in the sun to let any lingering moisture evaporate. 

Once they’re dry, use a lubricant spray such as FELCO 980 or a cloth to rub oil on metal surfaces and moving parts to prevent rust. Wooden handles should be oiled to prevent cracking and splintering. WD-40, linseed, tung, coconut, or camellia oil are all great oil options. Oiling doesn’t need to be done all the time – once every few months should suffice. 

One caveat: if you’ve been working with diseased plant material, you’ll need to disinfect them instead; more on that below. 

Disinfect After Working With Diseased Plant Material 

If you’ve been working with diseased plant material, it’s important to sanitize them immediately after use and before moving on to other plants. Pruning is extremely beneficial for plants, but it also wounds them. 

Much like keeping surgical instruments clean for humans to prevent cross-contamination and infection, plant tools need to be kept clean. This is an important step to prevent nasty diseases like root rot, blight, bacterial canker, and powdery mildew from spreading and killing your plants. 

Products like vinegar, tea tree oil, or hydrogen peroxide are great for general cleaning, but they aren’t great disinfectants. Here are a few products and methods to sanitize them. Be sure to spray them down to remove any dirt first.  

After sanitizing, be sure to dry them thoroughly.

Keep Them Sharp

If you’ve ever worked in a kitchen or are an experienced home cook, you’ve likely heard the safest knife is a sharp knife. The same goes for tools—the sharper they are, the less force needs to be exerted when using them. Hitting rocks while digging, chopping through woody vines, and everyday tasks wear them out over time. 

Before sharpening your tools, it’s important to keep safety top-of-mind with these tips: 

After washing and/or disinfecting, sharpen them. They usually need to be sharpened once a year, and winter is a great time to do this. Just about every garden instrument benefits from an occasional sharpening, including harvest knives, shears, hori-horis, and even rakes, trowels, and hoes. Depending on the tool, you may need a mill file, whetstone, grinder, or diamond hone. 

Whetstones are most useful for harvest knives, shears, and snips. Hoes, shovels, and rakes are best sharpened with a mill file. Hori-horis or digging knives should be sharpened with a round file. 

Reshape Bent Tools

Rakes, broadforks, straight-edge hoes, and anything with tines can easily get damaged, whether by rocks, boulders, or even an ambitious pile of leaves. Winter is a great time to give these guys a little extra TLC. Some of these can easily be reshaped with your hands, while others may need some extra elbow grease. A few may even require the use of a mallet and blowtorch, such as the thick metal tines of a broad fork. 

If you find yourself in this situation, you can heat up the spade or tine with a blow torch and then use a mallet to pound it back into place. That said, if this is a bit too ambitious or you don’t own a blow torch, try calling your local tool repair shop for help. 

Store Them Properly 

Storage can be fun and creative! The key is to keep them dry and out of humidity, if possible. A storage shed is a great idea if you have the space for one, but there are a plethora of other options. You can repurpose an old locker or mailbox outdoors, install a pegboard, hang them from a repurposed coat rack, or store them in a five-gallon bucket with a lid. 

But my favorite method, by far, is the oil-and-sand method. This method is cheap and easy and does three things at once: prevents rust, cleans, and provides storage. First, get a container. Any type of plastic container will do, but I’d recommend something that can hold at least five gallons. Then, fill the bucket with sand and drizzle with mineral oil or grapeseed oil for an eco-friendly alternative. 

Before storing, rinse and dry them before sticking them in the sand. Be wary of putting anything in with a shiny surface, like a hori-hori, as the sand will scratch the surface.