Best gifts for vegetable gardeners fi

Best Gifts for Vegetable Gardeners [Useful Gardening Gifts]

Whether the gardener in your life has an allotment, a garden or just a few containers and pots in the back yard, finding them the right gift can be hard work.  We veggie gardeners can be quite specific about how we work and what we like to work with.   It could even be that you have someone who’s looking to start gardening and you’re looking for gifts for beginner gardeners.  So what I’ll aim to do here is outline useful gifts for gardeners, the best gifts for vegetable gardeners that they will actually put to good use.   

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What I’m aiming to do in this article is overview gift ideas for vegetable gardeners, whether they’re beginners or experienced gardeners.  So that means they have to be useful gardening gifts.  Not just something that they’ll open and store in a cupboard.   So while I’ll include unusual gifts for gardeners they will be functional, serviceable gifts.  They won’t be gift ideas that aren’t useful.  I’m looking specifically at gifts for vegetable gardeners but will include some general gardening gifts.

Particularly Useful Gifts for Vegetable Gardeners

We don’t have a large living space and our gardening space is limited, therefore everything has to have a useful purpose.  And that’s what I’m addressing here.  Useful gifts for vegetable gardeners.  These are gifts that they will definitely use.  Presents that will be used regularly, not just stored in a cupboard.   How do I know?  Well, all of these are in regular, if not constant use not just in my house and garden, but also in the homes and gardens of other veggie gardening friends and colleagues.  Here’s just a few particularly useful gift ideas for gardeners.

Buy a Seed Storage Tin as a Gift for Growers

Seeds are precious commodities to gardeners.  And keeping them all together in a cool dry place is essential for their longevity.    And so many seeds look very similar, so keeping them separate is also important.  I’ve had one of these seed storage boxes for years and it’s fabulous.  I received it as a gift and immediately loved it.  Your gardening friends will too.

Seed Storage Packets and Tins

This seed storage box has a vintage vibe about it.  It will keep seeds dry and cool and most importantly safe!  Buy a seed storage box now!

Gift a Garden Kneeler

Garden Kneelers or Garden stools are one of those gifts for gardeners that they don’t realise how useful they are until they’ve got them.  It’s no secret we’re all getting older and a bit of space between us, our knees and the cold wet, hard ground is very welcome.  Garden kneelers come in all shapes and sizes. From a foam cushion garden kneeler (like this one ) to fabulous foldaway kneeler seats with attached tool bags – like this foldaway kneeler seat.

Most of the time gardeners spend tends to be close to the earth, kneeling or crouching down.  And a kneeler is an essential garden tool – and your veggie gardening friend will love you forever for this gardening gift idea.   Check out our guide to garden kneelers here – or skip to the chase and buy this garden kneeler bench and tool bag set as a useful gift for gardeners in your life. We think this is perfect as gifts for older gardeners.

Buy Gardening Gloves as a Gift for Gardeners

A great pair of gardening gloves are an essential item to the gardener in your life, especially when it’s cold, wet and miserable.   Well-designed gardening gloves protect their hands from dirt, scratches, stings as well as the wet and cold.   A great pair of gloves is essential, but they also don’t last forever, so if you’re spotting that the gardener who you’re buying a gift for is sporting an older pair of gloves, or gloves that look like they need replacing, then buying them this gift will put you in their good books for a long time to come.   We get quite precious about the type of gloves that we like, so if you can’t find a like for like replacement, look at the types of jobs that they do and find the right pair of gloves for that (see our guide to gardening gloves here) and then, if you want a great all-round gardening glove, check this fabulous pair of gloves for gardening out.

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The Best Overall Gardening Gloves

These general purpose gardening gloves are the best buy – they’re long lasting, useful and won’t wear out!

Gift A Trug / Harvest Basket to a Gardener

A wooden trug or harvest basket is a fabulous gift for veggie gardeners to transport their garden produce in.  These traditional wooden trugs are made from poplar wood and are shaped by hand with strong handles.  They look fabulous – especially if you will them with a stash of seeds or other gardening essentials are part of the gift.  These medium-sized trugs measure 40 cm x 23 cm.   Explore wooden trugs here.

Buy a Compost Bin as a gift for veggie gardeners

“Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” goes the saying.  And we have something similar in gardening. It’s called a compost bin.  (Read more about compost bins here) It might be that people are already composting, and they have a compost heap. You can never have enough compost – and top of our list as the best gifts for composters is a compost bin! Great compost for gardens is the equivalent of giving vegetables and plants vitamins.  They’ll get better nutrients and a better harvest and the next season of vegetables becomes better too.  Making compost isn’t difficult, but a fabulous compost bin makes it a whole lot easier and cleaner.  And you’ll rarely see a serious gardener with just one compost heap or bin.  So treat the gardener in your life and get them a compost bin.  This rolling compost bin is brilliant.

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The Best Compost Bin

When you buy a compost bin you can one thats quick to compost, easy to use and keep clean and a great deal. This is the best compost bin that meets all those requirements.

 It might take up a little more space, but the rolling means that the contents stay aerated and mixed with little of the physical requirements that you need if you do it manually.   The Envirocycle Composter has excellent reviews and is really easy to use, the Envirocycle Composting Tumbler bin comes in two sizes (65 litres or 133 litres) and is available in black or pink.  Read Envirocycle composter reviews and buy it here

Buy seeds as a gift for veggie growers

This pack of heirloom vegetable seeds are special.  All the seeds are sourced in the UK are untreated and non-GMO.  This pack contains 15 mixed vegetable seeds, 15 plant labels and a vegetable growing guide.  A seed variety is typically known as an heirloom if it existed 50 years ago or more.   It’s been grown and passed from one generation to another.  Heirloom seeds are a fabulous gift for veggie gardeners.  Buy this pack of heirloom seeds as a gift now.

This pack of heirloom seeds includes Beetroot seeds (Detroit Globe), Carrot seeds (Autumn King), Cauliflower seeds (Snowball), Celery seeds (Golden Self Blanching), Chard seeds (Rhubarb Chard), Courgette seeds (Courgette Zucchini), Kale seeds (Nero di Toscana), Mixed Leaf Lettuce seeds (Mixed Leaf), Parsnip seeds (Tender and True), Purple Sprouting Broccoli seeds (Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli), Rocket seeds (Eruca Sativa), Spinach seeds (Medina), Spring Onion seeds (White Lisbon), Spring Cabbage seeds (Wheeler’s imperial) and Tomato seeds (Alicante).

Seed gifts for gardeners are a great way to help your friends and family expand their growing expertise and this unusual vegetable seed gift really is something different, it really is one of the best seed gift ideas we’ve seen.

Not only does this pack include seeds that gardeners are unlikely to have grown before, but they can save the seeds produced each year, so they can be planted again, saving money.  Buy this Heirloom Seed Gift bag now!

Budget Gifts for Gardeners

Gifts for gardeners don’t have to be expensive.  It’s the thought, after all, that counts.  Just as importantly, I think is that the gift should be useful.  And these budget gifts for gardeners are seriously useful as well as not budget-breaking.

Gift a paper pot making kit

We’re all about reusing and repurposing and this gift idea for gardeners will help them both reuse and re purpose.  It’ll also help them to remove reliance on plastic.  The paper pot maker from Burgon Ball means that they’ll be able to do away with plastic pots and make a continuous supply of seedling pots with old newspaper.    Check out this paper seedling pot making kit here.

This gift is made from beechwood and allows gardeners to make 3 different pot sizes – 3cm, 4.75cm and 6cm in diameter.  They’ll not only be recycling biodegradable newspaper but they’ll save money on buying new pots too!  Not only that but as the paper biodegrades in the compost or soil, there’s less disturbance to the roots of the seedlings.  So everyone wins.  Including you, for buying such a fabulous gift for the gardener in your life.  Buy this budget vegetable gardeners gift here.

Buy Hand Cream for Gardeners

I use gardening gloves as much as I can, but many times, there’s nothing for it but to pull the gloves off and get my hands dirty.  And then of course I end up scrubbing my hands and they end up sore.  I’m not alone in this.    I have bought all sorts of hand cream over the years.  And none of it comes close to O’Keefe’s Working Hand Cream.  This stuff is amazing.  Check it out here.

You don’t need much of this.  Just a small dab. And because you use so little of it lasts forever.  And it is truly brilliant.  Whether your gardener is male or female, young or old, once they start using this they’ll never turn away from it.   Of course, you could also REALLY treat them and buy them the foot cream and skin cream too.  They are both also glorious.  Buy hand cream as a gift for gardeners now.

Buy a Vegetable Gardeners Advent Calendar

Now I’ve always thought that Gin Advent Calendars and Wine Advent calendars are brilliant inventions.  Buy this one is even better.  This Vegetable Gardeners Advent Calendar is a superb gift for veggie growers.   Check it out here.

This seed advent calendar contains 24 VARIETIES of seeds, including heirloom seeds, each packed in a small paper bag.  In addition to the plant seeds in small paper bags, the vegetable growers advent calendar includes a natural jute string and 24 wooden clothespins for decorative fastening of the bags.  All can be grown on a windowsill, balcony or in the vegetable patch! On every plant seed package, there are detailed instructions on how to grow herbs and veggies, incl. tips for cooking.  It’s a fabulous gift that will provide 24 days of fun and months of activities growing.  Buy this seed advent calendar for gardeners here.

Buy Herb and Veg Plot Markers As a Gift for Gardeners

These slate herb and veg plot markers are a great reusable gift for gardeners.  There are 20 pieces of slate with a soapstone chalk stick, so they can be reused time and again.  They’re a great reusable gift for gardeners – buy them here.

These elegant, but durable plant labels are a great way for gardeners to keep the garden organised.  Names and dates will all fit on the natural slate markets and the soapstone chalk won’t wear off in the rain but can be rubbed off by gently scrubbing under running water.  It makes a perfect gift and comes in a heavy-duty box to prevent breakages.  Buy this gorgeous reusable gardening gift here.

Growing Gifts for Veggie Gardeners

There’s nothing veggie gardeners like better than growing vegetables and these gift ideas are all about that.  Providing the vegetable gardener with gifts that do just that.  Grow vegetables. 

Mushroom Growing Kit as a Gift

A mushroom growing kit is a great gift for gardeners because you can grow mushrooms every month of the year.  Mushrooms like warm dark places.  So a cupboard is a great place to grow mushrooms and mushroom growing kits come with everything you need (apart from water) to grow mushrooms.  And to be fair once you’ve grown your own mushrooms it’s pretty hard to go back to buy mushrooms from anyone else. Check out our guide to mushroom growing kits here.

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The Best Mushroom Growing Kit

This excellent Mushroom Growing kit from the folks at Merryhill Mushrooms is the perfect starter mushroom growing kit and it’s so easy to get started with full instructions

Using a mushroom growing kit for beginners will get you started with ready to grow mushrooms quickly and easily. And they’re a pretty unique growing gift for gardeners. 

Mushroom growing kits come with the material on which the mushrooms are going to grow – wood, soil etc. – as well as the spores for the mushrooms and details on what you’ll need to do in terms of watering, temperature requirements and also the best location for your mushroom growing kit.  Whether you buy a white mushroom growing kit or an oyster mushroom growing kit – it’s likely to be one of the more unique gifts for gardeners that you’ll find.  Buy this best buy mushroom growing kit here.

Chilli Growing Kit as a Gift

Chillies are such an easy fruit to grow and most of them can be grown indoors easily.  So they’re a great gift for gardeners, especially if you’re gifting during the darker months of the year.  Chilli plants will happily sit on a warm windowsill, in a conservatory, or the kitchen and cheer up the house no end.  They will, of course, cheer up taste buds too, so buying a chilli growing kit for a gardener is a great way to provide a present that they get joy out of for months if not years into the future.

This chilli growing kit is hand-packed by a family business in the North East of the UK and it focuses on super-hot chillies.  Four of the world’s hottest chilli varieties.  The kit comes with fabric grow bags, four sachets of seeds, four expanding coco coir potting soil disks, bamboo plant marker, chilli plant feed, a seed growing guide AND a wooden gift box planter with a drip tray too!  It’s a great gift for gardeners who want to try something different. Check it out and buy it now.

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The Best Chilli Growing Kit

This is the best general chilli growing kit you can get. It has a great slection of chilli seeds and includes all you need to get started growing chillies!

Gift a Fruit Tree to a Gardener

I’d love an orchard.  In the absence of that, a few trees will do me and these mini fruit trees are a fabulous growing present for gardeners.  They’re all hardy potted plants and they’re specifically designed for small gardens and patios, balconies or terraces.  They’re easy to grow and will produce heavy crops of fruits.  Check out the options for gifting a fruit tree here.

These five mini fruit trees come in 9 cm pots and with full instructions (and a 100% guarantee of your money back if you’re not satisfied) for how to care for the trees.  These mini fruit trees are a fantastic growing gift for gardeners. 

Buy a PolyTunnel or Greenhouse as a gift

By gifting a polytunnel or greenhouse to gardening friends and family what you’re presenting them with is an extension of their growing season and that is completely invaluable.  Greenhouses and polytunnels make a massive difference to what they can grow and when they can grow it.  If your gardening friends only have a small space, then a small budget greenhouse (that can be broken down and stored when not in use) is perfect – and this one here is a great option.  If they have more space, then we’ve covered some of the other mini-greenhouses available here.

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The Best Mini Greenhouse

This mini greenhouse is small, compact and easy to put up and store in the winter. It’s not expensive and its reasonably robust.

For those gardeners in your life that have a little more space and are much more serious about growing fruit and veg, then polytunnels are an incredibly important garden tool.  The polythene cover heats up with the sun and warms the interior of the tunnel.  This creates a microclimate of humidity and hot air within the polytunnel.   

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The Best Polytunnel Kit

This polytunnel is a great starter kit for your first tunnel. It’s easy to construct, pretty robust and a good price too!

They’re amazing, and I succumb to polytunnel envy regularly when I see people with much more gardening space than we have.  This is a fabulous great first polytunnel for beginners, and there are other options that we’ve covered in our guide to polytunnels here.

Gift Ideas for Veggie Growers Who Cook

Most of those of us who grow vegetables do so because we use those vegetables in the kitchen.  So there’s no need to limit looking at gifts for gardeners on the outside.  Let’s take a look at gift ideas for gardeners who cook too!  These gift ideas for gardeners are simple– and they’re items that I use every week, with produce from the garden. 

Buy a Food dehydrator as a gift for gardeners

Veggie gardeners often get gluts of fruit and veg.  It all comes at once (just try growing courgettes and you’ll see what I mean!) and then you have to figure out what to do with it quickly before it goes off.   Plus it’s also nice to be able to preserve some produce for months when the garden isn’t producing fresh stuff.

Dehydrating fruit and vegetables is a brilliant way to retain many of the nutrients, flavour and taste for up to a year after it’s been harvested!  And food dehydrators are both energy efficient and easy to use.  (we wrote about them here).

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The Best Food Dehydrator

This excellent food dehydrator is perfect for drying all your favourite fruits, vegetables and meats. It’s a great efficient machine.

This is a fabulous food dehydrator to gift for the gardener who cooks.  Check it out now.

Buy a Jam Making Kit Gift for Gardeners

One of the best Christmas’s we had was the first year we had the allotment.  Everyone got homemade chutney’s, pickles and jams.  And they loved it.  The Tomato Relish was a particular success.  And so that’s why I know this is a fabulous gift for gardeners who cook A jam or chutney making kit with everything that veggie and fruit growers need to preserve their produce as relish, pickle, chutney or jam is a gift that they’ll use for years and years.  And if you buy this jam-making kit you’ll guarantee yourself a lifetime supply of gifted jams and chutneys back from your gardening friends too! This is our guide to jam-making kits.

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Jam Kit

The Best Jam Making Kit

This superb jam and chutney making kit has everything you need for making homemade chutney and jam.

Buy a Cheese Making Kit for Cooking Gardeners

Now while we don’t have our own on tap supply of milk we do eat a lot of cheese, and can’t always get hold of the type of cheese that we want to include in our cooking.  Paneer is an especial favourite.  And burrata.  And halloumi.  Oh, who am I kidding, it’s all great.  So when I was bought this cheese making kit a few years back it set me off on making my own cheese.  And I haven’t stopped since.

It’s a fabulous introduction to making cheese, with recipes for five different types of cheese.  It doesn’t include any fresh ingredients, so it won’t go “off”, but it does include step by step instructions on how to make your own cheese.  So buy this cheese making kit for the cooking gardener in your life!

Unusual Gifts for Gardeners

So I think I’ve included some pretty darned useful gifts for gardeners so far and now it’s time to turn to the slightly more unusual gardening gifts.  These unusual presents for gardeners are ones that you probably wouldn’t think of for gardeners, some of them are a little out there, but they’re all fabulously useful gifts too.

Gift a Hedgerow Wine Making Kit

There’s only one thing better than giving wine as a gift and that’s giving someone the ability to make their own wine.  This genius gift doesn’t even require a garden.  Just a hedgerow and a bit of foraging.   Recipes include Apple (sour), Apricot, Aronia, Banana, Beetroot, Blackberry, Blackcurrant, Blueberry, Cherry, Crab Apple, Cranberry, Damson, Elderberry, Elderflower, Gooseberry, Grape, Greengage, Honey Mead, Loganberry, Loquat, Mango, Orange, Parsnip, Peach, Pear, Pineapple, Plum, Raisin, Raspberries, Redcurrant, Rhubarb, Rose Petal, Rosehip, Rowanberry, Sloe, Strawberry.  It just requires fruit and a brewing container to make fruit wine!  It’s a great fun gift for those gardeners looking for something a little different.  Buy a winemaking kit now!

The kit is made in the UK and makes a perfect gift for foragers and gardeners alike.  Buy it here now!

Hydroponic Vegetable Starter Kit

You’re likely reading this as we head either into Autumn or Winter, which isn’t the best time for veggie gardeners.  It’s often wet, cold and miserable in the UK at this time of year and nothing much grows.  So the veggie gardener is either doing some maintenance, tidying up or planning what they might be doing in the garden when it starts to warm up in the Spring, which feels like a LONG TIME AWAY.

This gift idea for veggie growers means that they can grow vegetables year-round.  No matter what the outside weather.  It’s a hydroponic starter kit and it is truly fabulous.  Check it out now.

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The Best Hydroponic Starter Kit

This starter hydroponic kit gives you everything you need to start growing fruits and veg hydroponically. It’s small, neat and SERIOUSLY easy to use!

Hydroponics is the method of growing plants without soil.   When you grow vegetables in the ground or in pots and containers they take their nutrients from the soil and the sun.  With a hydroponics system, those nutrients are dissolved in the water that the plant’s roots sit in.  It is much easier for a hydroponic plant to absorb the nutrients from water than it is from seeking the nutrients out in the soil.  They get nutrients also from integrated heat lamps.  This tends to mean that hydroponic plants grow bigger, and quicker.   There are a few hydroponic starter kits that we wrote about here), but if you want the TLDR option, then this one from IDOO is both affordable and very, very easy to use.  Buy this hydroponics starter system as a gift for veggie growers now and who knows maybe they’ll be offloading their fresh produce on you in a month or so!!

The Best Personalised Gifts for Gardeners

So far we’ve covered general but extremely useful gardening gifts, so now it’s onto personalised gardening gifts. These might be the gifts for gardeners who have everything, and who you want to surprise with perhaps an unusual gardening gift.

There are some fabulous unusual gardening gifts that can be personalised. Here is our favourite.

A Personalised Garden Trug Set for Gardeners

This unique gift really is unique to who you’re gifting it to.  Personalization means that the wooden handled tools are engraved with a name, or perhaps a message. This full gardening set includes a full antique wash finish willow basket with cream elasticated strapping.  Inside the trug is a Personalised fork, Personalised trowel, wooden markers, string and measuring dibber.  It’s a great looking personalised gift for gardeners.   Buy it now.

This personalised gardening gift is designed, made and engraved in the UK and it makes a fabulous gardening gift for any member of the family, friends or colleagues – buy your personalised gardening gifts here.

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Final Words on Useful Gifts for Vegetable Gardeners

Regardless of the budget, you have for the veggie gardener in your life, there’s a perfect veggie growers gift out there.  The best gardening gifts don’t have to cost a fortune, to be honest, the thought that you put into it is more important.  Find the gardener in your life something that they can grow or use to grow what they love growing and they’ll likely be happy.  Get the gardener in your life some of our presents for gardeners – like a useful gadget or tool that they can use to make their life easier and their veggies better in the garden and they’ll be ecstatic.   We hope you’ve found these handy gift ideas for vegetable gardeners useful!

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