By Adrienne Perron
From our April 2022 issue
When Gary and Kay Campbell started their stone- and woodworking business, Rustic Workbench, in 2005, one of the first items Gary made was a dibble ($25). The Jefferson-based Campbells, avid gardeners, knew how helpful the oft-overlooked little hand tool could be. Simple and versatile, a dibble looks like a wooden carrot, its pointy end for driving into the ground. The notched marks along its side help gardeners plant seed at appropriate depths, ensuring proper moisture and soil temps, and dibbles can also aerate soil and create watering holes for plants. Gary is a dibble evangelist: like gardening gloves, he says, they keep one’s hands from getting dirty or roughed up in the soil, and they’re as good as a trowel at keeping soil from compacting, which can stunt plant growth. “It’s just nice to have all of those things in one tool,” Gary says.
He turns his handsome dibbles from ash, a durable wood sturdy enough to be hammered into stony soil, then applies a mineral-oil finish to prevent cracking (it’s a good idea for dibble owners to refinish annually). Some dibbles are chunky, but Rustic Workbench keeps them thinner, so they’re easily stashed in a gardener’s pocket and can make a more precise hole (for a bigger one, just swirl it around a few times). “The dibble is an ultra-simple solution to many problems,” Gary says. “It’s nothing fancy, but it does what it needs to do.”
