Kent & Stowe Stainless Steel Long Handled Bulb Planter 100% FSC

Product Information

The base of this bulb planter is serrated, which should help it easily slice into a variety of terrain types. The foot treads that sit above this are relatively wide – even if you’re wearing chunky wellies, you should still get a good grip. Blade features a 10cm / 4in scale to assist with planting depth and has a 6cm / 2.3in diameter suitable for even large bulbs.

This WOLF-Garten bulb planter is extremely simple to use. All you need to do is place it down onto the soil, and then twist and push it in until you’ve reached your desired depth. Then, lift it out and you’ll see the soil plug held between the tool’s circular blades. On the downside, unlike the other bulb planters I tested, which neatly collect the soil that they remove from each hole, this one pushes it to the side and compacts it in. You won’t be able to refill the hole with the same soil, meaning that you’ll need to have extra soil or compost with you when planting.As you can see, there’s not much to it. The only time the tool was difficult to use was on hard and stony ground. Even after exerting a fair amount of pressure (which you’re not meant to do), I couldn’t push the planter in deep enough. Although simple to use, how easily it works will de pend on the type of soil. I struggled to use this bulb planter in heavy and stony soil – it required a fair amount of pressure to get to the appropriate depth, and there were some parts of my garden where I couldn’t get the tool in more than a couple of centimetres deep. I couldn’t see any bulbs in the holes (I’m hoping they were further down) but I re-covered the holes anyway and have my fingers crossed for spring! Since these were pretty extenuating circumstances, I haven’t detracted any points from my scoring of the product, but it’s worth a mention for those of you who live in storm-prone areas. The ProPlugger is clearly a tool designed for larger-scale plantings – it’s the best bulb planter for large quantities of of bulbs. However, it’s not really worth the money if you only have a handful of bulbs to plant. The type of soil that you will be digging into should certainly affect your buying decision. Most low budget long-handled bulb planters work just fine if you have nice, soft soil, but will struggle, or even break under the stresses of trying to work in clay soil.

It’s worth noting that this was the most worm-friendly bulb planting tool that I tested, possibly because it created the smallest hole compared to the rest. The ProPlugger couldn’t get much easier to use. All you need to do is place the tool over the area of soil you want to dig (after sliding on the appropriate depth ring), step down onto it, give it a twist, and pull it up. The only real downside to this tool is that it doesn’t have any depth measurement markings on it. This is something that most bulb planters usually have, and it does make life a little easier when you’re planting a variety of bulbs that need to go in at different depths. However, if you’ve planted plenty of bulbs before, it’s easy enough to estimate how deep you need to push the dibber in to obtain your required depth.I used this bulb planter to plant a variety of spring bulbs, including tulips, daffodils, anemones, and snowdrops. Some went into raised beds, others went into hard and uncultivated soil, and several went into lawn. The end of the planter cone is serrated and designed to cut into the soil easier, and if used correctly, it does the job well. However, like a lot of these lower cost tools, they aren’t built to cut through dense clay soils, or straight into lawns, and should be used on a well-watered bed or similar for best results. This was one of the most comfortable bulb planting tools that I tested. Its padded handles are appreciated when using the tool for extended periods of time, and the fact that you can stand up and work, rather than having to constantly bend over, is a big advantage. The ProPlugger 5-in-1 Planting Tool boasts a truly unique design – I’ve never actually seen a planting tool before that looks quite like this one.