One lovely bonus of planting in a community garden is the need to haul stuff back and forth to the garden. Unlike a home garden, you can’t just keep your tools in the garage and pull them out as you need them.

Community garden tools

Granted, the garden does have a well-stocked tool shed with basically anything you might need. I use the community tools that don’t fit in my bucket like spades, rakes, etc. But for the smaller items, I bring my own either because of preference, availability, or (initially) because I didn’t want to walk to the other end of the garden, unlock the shed, re-lock it etc. for a trowel.

The garden bucket

I started with bags, backpacks, bins etc. but eventually got frustrated that I could never find the smaller things, and didn’t have any space for bigger things. Enter: the bucket organizer.

I got a small bucket at Home Depot, and an organizer on Amazon. I slipped the organizer on and here it is:

I really like it because it’s a good balance of little pockets to keep thing organized, and a nice larger internal space to dump other stuff that might need carrying (a water bottle, harvest, special tools, etc.)

What’s inside

Other stuff sometimes sneaks into the bucket, but these are my go-to tools. Occasionally I bring it into the house to clean the tools or reorganize / clean out any trash that snuck in. For the most part, it just lives in my car so I’m ready to garden at a moment’s notice.