Ease of Use: If the tool was easy to use with little effort needed on your part, even in tough soil, then it was rated much higher. This included bulb planters with longer handles, as this made them more accessible to all; you don’t have to bend down to use them, and they require minimal effort, meaning they can be used for long periods. If anything on it was adjustable (like the planting depth), we assessed how simple and easy it was to adjust it. If it did not have adjustable planting depth or at least planting depth markers, it scored lower because these required much more effort to assess the depth yourself. We also gave the bulb planter tool better scores if it collected multiple soil plugs or if it only collected a single soil plug, whether it was easy to pop out and could be used to refill the holes once the bulbs were planted. You then have two options. Place your bulb into the hole and then turn the bulb planter upside down to release the soil over the top of the bulb. Alternatively, move on to dig your second hole. As you do so, the new soil that enters into the cone will push the old soil out of the top. Leave it on the ground and carry on digging all of your holes. Once dug, you can move along them with your bag of bulbs, dropping one into each hole, before filling them in with the soil plug that’s sitting beside each hole.

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.There’s nothing complicated about using this bulb planter. Simply place it onto your soil and then step down onto the foot treads, twisting the tool as you do so. As it digs into the ground, the soil that it removes is held within the planter’s conical head – once you lift the tool out, you’ll see the plug. In terms of measurements, the dibber is 29 cm long in total , and the spike/head is 12 cm . While dibbers are available in many different sizes, this one seems ideal for bulb planting.

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. You won’t need any instructions for this bulb planter (which is a good thing since there aren’t any!) – it really is very straight forward to use. Place it over your chosen area of soil and then step onto the foot treads. Twist the tool as it makes its way downwards, and it should neatly slice into the soil, collecting the plug into its conical head as it does so. Another thing to note, is that there is some extra weight that comes with the solidity and sturdiness of the countryman long-handled bulb planter, and this might make it a good choice only for people who don’t mind a bit of workout for the arms and shoulders. If you do an online search for the ‘best bulb planter tools’, you’ll likely come across products from several different brands that look exactly like the WOLF-Garten FHN Bulb Planter Hand Tool. However, with WOLF-Garten being a brand that’s known for their innovation and quality, I was hoping that their version of this classic bulb planter would outshine the rest and make it easy for me to plant a variety of spring-flowering bulbs around my farm. A long-handled bulb planter consists of a long handle, often resembling a spade or some similar garden tool, and a cone shaped head. To use one, you only have to position it where you intend to plant the bulb, use your foot to push the cone into the soil, give it a few twists, and then pull the tool out, along with the soil.

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If your soil is particularly hard or stony, then this isn’t a tool that I would recommend (look into the Syitcun Auger Drill Bit or the ProPlugger tools that I also tested). However, if your soil is relatively soft and obstacle-free, the Draper 3082 Bulb Planter is an extremely useful tool to have around – no matter the type of flower bulbs you’re planting. It’s heavy, but this also means that you don’t need to use any force when digging holes. Rather than having to manually push this tool into the ground, the step, twist, and pull motion is all that is required. I had several bulbs to plant, from tiny onion sets to plump garlic cloves to chunky tulip bulbs, giving me plenty of opportunities to test this award-winning tool out. If you’re planting a lot of larger bulbs, use a bulb planter hand tool that removes plugs of earth . This tool creates uniform holes, and fills them in again, in two simple steps. Look for a width of around 60 mm, and depth marking on the side – something that can be really useful when planting different types of bulb.

It’s also worth noting that due to the length of this drill bit, you’ll need to bend over for each hole that you dig. If this is an issue for you, but you like the idea of the auger drill bit, you could look into one of the longer/larger sizes available. These tools are designed to make holes that are just the right and depth size for planting the most common types of bulbs, and so it takes out a lot of the guesswork. What are the best long-handled bulb planters available in the UK?

How to Guide

At just over 1.2kg in weight, this Draper long-handled bulb planter is quite light for a completely metal construction. The WOLF-Garten FHN Bulb Planter Hand Tool performed exactly as I expected it to. It’s not a planter that I would recommend to anyone that has overly hard or stony soil, but, for everyone else, this clever little tool will make the bulb planting process so much faster. The Draper 3082 Bulb Planter may be lightweight, but it feels like a durable tool. It’s made from chrome-plated steel and is fitted with a green plastic handle with a button that can be squeezed to trigger the tool’s soil-release feature. This high-quality Long Handled stainless steel bulb planter allows the easy creation of uniform holes for the planting of all your favourite bulbs of all shapes and sizes.

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. As mentioned, I found this bulb planter to be most effective on the soft soil in my raised flowerbeds – I was able to use it one-handed for the majority of the time. That said, I did use it on grass, and over a dried grass clipping mulch too, and it cut through both of these well. In addition to planting bulbs and small plants, you can also use this tool for removing weeds with deep taproots, extracting soil samples, drip-edge fertilising trees and as a lawn/sod plugger. 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. The exception would be if you’ve been struggling to dig through hard ground – this tool makes that effortless.

If you have clay soil, it is our advice, that you pay more, and get a stronger, more durable tool. Materials