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Over the years I’ve been gardening, I’ve accumulated a lot of handy tools that I use throughout the growing season. But when it comes to must-have gardening items, nothing compares to my hori hori tool.
Sleek, easy to use, and versatile, hori hori tools aren’t as commonly used as hand rakes, trowels, or pruners, but hori horis can easily replace all three of these other tools and do lots more besides. Here’s why I think hori horis are so incredibly useful and why this tool definitely deserves a space in your garage or potting shed!
My Recommendation
Shall Hori Hori Japanese Garden Knife
Featuring smooth and serrated blade edges, a notch for cutting rope, and a 6-inch measuring scale, this is my go-to tool for gardening.
Buy NowWeeding
The main reason I purchased a hori hori gardening knife was to aid with weeding my no-till garden. Unlike standard shovels and hand trowels, hori horis are quite narrow, which limits the amount of soil that’s disturbed when weeding and is ideal for no-till gardens. Hori horis are also long and sharp at the edges, which makes it easy to pull up or sever the deep taproots of tough weeds like dandelions far below the soil line without needing to break a sweat digging.
Planting
Aside from weeding, narrow hori hori blades are also ideal for digging narrow planting holes for bulbs in fall, or planting holes for small seedlings and transplants in spring. I like to use my hori hori to plant seeds, as well. I simply drag the tip of the hori hori along the soil line to create a narrow planting trench for any seeds I want to sow.
Measuring
There are lots of top notch hori hori knives on the market, but I’m particularly fond of the hori hori I purchased (see My Recommendation above) as it has both a serrated and smooth blade and handy measurements along the blade length. These measurement markings are useful for planting seeds, seedlings, and bulbs at the perfect depth, but you can use hori hori blades to measure lots of other garden items!
Pruning
Since hori horis have bladed edges, they can be used to prune plant stems and roots on the go. This will save you the trouble of returning to your potting shed if you accidentally forgot to pick up your pruners and you ran into overgrown plant roots or stems while working in your beds.
Dividing
When it comes time to divide perennials in spring or fall, you can also use a hori hori to divide plant roots into divisions. Just wedge the hori hori blade in between the roots you’d like to divide and wiggle it back and forth until the roots separate. You can also use the bladed edges to cut stubborn roots apart and trim the long leaves of plants like daylilies back so the plants are easier to divide.
Harvesting
Long-rooted veggies like parsnips and carrots can sometimes break off below the soil line when harvesting and leave you with damaged crops. But hori horis are one of the best harvesting tools you can find, as they work the soil deep and can easily lever hard to reach root vegetables out of the earth without doing major damage.
Odds and Ends
While hori hori knives are traditionally used for planting, weeding, and harvesting, that doesn’t mean you can’t use these versatile tools for other gardening tasks. My hori hori came with a sheath and belt loop, which makes it easy to keep it with me wherever I go in the garden and use the knife for any task that comes up.
Over the years, I’ve used my hori hori to cut open bags of bird seed and potting soil, dig caked on debris out of my birdhouses during spring cleaning, clean stuck on leaves out of my gutter, trim gardening twine while trellising tomatoes, and much more!
