Well, it depends on the season. Before planting, it's a wheelbarrow, shovel, and lots of soil/amendments/compost.

While planting it's a trowel and this cool little garden container on wheels that I sit on while planting. Inside I keep all my drip system parts, etc. Really saves the back and knees.

After, it's scissors and twine to keep my trellised plants where they belong. And I pick produce with two buckets, one for the compost pile, the other for the kitchen.

And for all of the above: Gloves! I buy them by the bushel!

My gardening tools are:
-- shovel(several), hand shovel, hand cultivator, pruner, rakes. And , of course, wheel barrow.

Stirrup hoe, little sharp hoe, sharp-tined rake thing, sharp knife, hand tool with one pointed and and one rake-like end, narrow trowel.

Thanks to all for the responses. Besides the bigger items mentioned (again I greatly appreciate your advice) are there smaller things I need to remember to bring to the garden? I see in garden catalogs belts and tool kits and have wondered if I'm missing something as I don't one and I don't even know what I'd put in it if I did.

IMO those are things for the gardeners who have everything and the families desperate to come up with gift ideas. LOL

My garden is only 3 steps from my shed, though. If I had to walk a haul for my tools....well, I'd still probably just throw them in my wheel barrow.

I keep my hand tools in a square bucket that I can carry with me to the garden bed where I'm working.

Link to similar discussion in the Florida Gardening forum.

Here is a link that might be useful: What are your favorite beyond-the-basics garden tools?

I forgot couple of importan ones: Watering can. I do most of my fertilizing using a 2gal watering can. The other one is a 1-gal sprayer. I use that to spray my plants with things like fungal pesticides, and foliar feeding.

Small items ? Always some kind of twine is handy.

Rulers. Not just a tape measure but a ruler(s). I've got a couple of yardsticks and a four-footer that I use all the time in the vegetable garden. I'm the type of person that has to have my vegetables spaced out exactly (this exact spacing doesn't apply to flower beds). But I also use them to make straight, shallow furrows in the garden beds for things like carrot and beet seeds.

My favorite hand tool for actually gardening with, by far, is a Japanese ikagata hoe. It's got a stout hoe blade on one end and three prongs on the other. It is always in my hand.

Like ltilton, I use a bucket to carry my stuff. No belt for me. Don't want one, don't need one. Even if I had one I probably wouldn't use it.

Rodney

Another vote for my Ikagata (especially if you have hard or rocky soil) plus my Hori-Hori that cuts, digs, saws, trims, harvests, plants, and furrows.

And you can't garden without a good hoe, or two. I use my swan-neck hoe that is so easy on the back for just about everything and as ltilton said, a good sharp stirrup (aka hula aka shuffle) hoe is invaluable for weeding and cultivating.

Dave

It varies a lot by garden type and gardener style, I'd imagine. Backyard raised-bed garden and semi-free-for-all gardener here (I plant things wherever they will fit; let's just say the concept of a garden ruler would never have occurred to me :)). My garden basket (lives on the deck, take it out with me most of the time) contains gloves, trowel, hand cultivator, garden twine (I grow everything that can be trained vertically that way to maximize space), scissors, sunblock, and bug spray (for me, not the plants), and I have a stock of various sized bamboo poles that live in the garden for staking/teepee-ing things as needed. If I were harvesting at the same time I'd also bring a mesh basket to gather produce in.

Do a search for "tools for the beginning gardener" and you'll find a lot of info.

Good quality makes a big difference and will last longer.

A sharp knife.

My vegetable garden is 5 minutes walk away from my home on an allotment. There I have a large wooden box inside which I keep a push mower, a spade (NOT a shovel) a fork, a trowel, a hand fork, a folding spring tine rake, an ordinary rake, a Dutch hoe, a pair of secateurs, a roll of string, horticultural fleece, netting, a pack of slug pellets, an oil can, a can of WD40, a pair of garden shears, a pair of edging shears, a folding pruning saw, an umbrella, a water bottle, gloves, and a supply of plastic bags and plastic boxes for carrying home produce. Outside the box are a wheel barrow, an old galvanized bucket, two watering cans and a supply of canes. In heavy rain I have been known to get in the box myself.

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden survival kit storage box.

While I garden at home, I spend way too much time going back forth for things and since there is more than 1 gardener in my household, I am finding it a necessity to develop my own garden bag (akin to a tool bag) that will house my favorite implements. These will include:

Stiff tape measure
Spade with a ruler engraged in it
Pruners (precision and larger)
Ziploc baggies
Plastic bags (for plant trimmings that cannot go into the compost, trash, etc)
Alcohol swabs (sterilizing pruners)
Gloves (more than 1 pair, just in case)
Hand cultivator (one side has tines, one has a hoe, great for breaking up roots)
Weeding sickle
Rasp for sharpening things
Strips of old T-shirts for tying things
Pocket knife/Leatherman
Zip ties
Wide brimmed hat.

If I gardened away from the house I would probably add sun screen, water bottle and a camera to document anything that I feel I would need to research later (bugs, foliage spots, etc), for many people this could be accomplished with their phone, but I would not trust my memory when comparing images online later. Pen and paper is always a good idea too.

bare minimum:

kneeling pad (heaven)
gloves (lots of them)
hoe
shovel
trowel
wheel barrow
pruning sheers