Our ongoing series “Jojoba 101” is all about unique ways to use jojoba throughout the house/garden. Around our offices and homes, we all use jojoba in a wide variety of ways. It’s always nice to have an alternative to petroleum-based products, especially one that is non-toxic like jojoba. One way we have been using jojoba oil is to protect our garden and garage tools. It protects not only the wooden portions but the metal portions as well.The first step to using jojoba for this purpose is to clean your tools well, sanding the wooden portions and removing any rust with a metal brush is ideal. Once the tool is cleaned, simply rub a coating or two of jojoba on, we use an old cotton sock that has been demoted to the rag pile.

After cleaning our tools well, we gave them a few coats of jojoba (this was in February). Most of them are kept indoors to keep them out of the elements, a few have been left out so we can monitor the protective efficacy of the jojoba. As you can see here, after four months, the jojoba oil is still doing its job of protecting the metal and wooden portions of the tools to prevent rust.

We will clean these tools again this fall and reapply jojoba. Then in the spring, they will get another coat to be ready for the gardening season once again. Our non-toxic jojoba oil not only works for garden tools but garage tools as well. Any metal or wooden tools can be protected with jojoba.