Thanks so much for your purchase of our garden staples!

We sometimes get comments from customers when they see rust on our steel garden staples.  We thought it was common knowledge that steel rusts, but it seems some people are quite surprised by this fact, so we thought we'd give a little more information about it to help our customers make an informed purchasing decision.

To start off with; yes, all steel rusts when exposed to moisture (even from the humidity in the air or moisture in the ground), unless it's coated or painted. You will notice this on bridges, cars, etc.) This is true of any garden staple that you buy, not just ours, unless you buy painted, galvanized, or stainless steel staples. (Actually those staples will often rust eventually too, depending on their quality/coating, but it will take longer.)  Since those types of staples come at a higher price most people don't buy them unless they have a specific need for anti-rusting staples.

And there's also another major reason that most gardeners don't use galvanized or stainless steel staples--because having the staples rust is generally a positive feature because that rust "grows" into the soil, binds with it, and creates much greater holding power; often as much as 2x-4x more depending on your soil type. That extra holding power is a positive feature that most gardeners are looking for.

(If you look at the third bullet point of our non-galvanized staples Amazon listing we state: "Designed to start rusting quickly to "grow" into the soil & increase holding power 2x-4x." We put that in the listing because we want to make sure that if people don't want that feature, that they buy some of our galvanized staples.)

Other positive things that customers comment on is that the rust color helps the staples to disappear visually into the soil better than a shiny piece of silver. And some folks like the fact that for permanent installations such as holding down sod or landscape fabric, they don't have to try and find and remove the staples from the soil sometime in the future, which is usually a pretty hard thing to do. So long after the staples have served their useful purpose, they will eventually "go back to the earth" (rust away) so they will not be a hazard in the future for people walking, playing, or digging in the soil, for tools, a tiller, etc.

How long they've been in the ground and how much moisture they've been exposed to will determine how quickly they will rust. Many people get a few seasons use out of our staples. And even though they may be rusty it doesn't necessarily mean that you can't use them again. If most of the steel remains intact and they're still strong enough to drive into the ground then you can usually use them again in the future (or of course just leave them in place). But again, it all will depend on your usage, soil type, amount of moisture, etc.

So because of all of these reasons (mainly higher cost and lower holding strength) most people tend to go with our non-galvanized high-grade steel garden staples.

Typical Uses For Galvanized or Other Slower-Rusting Staples

Having said all of that, of course some people do have a need for staples that don't rust and/or don't hold as well, such as if they put them in and pull them out of the soil quite often, if they use them in a decorative situation where not having the rust color is important, or if there is some other specific reason where the rust would not be a desirable feature.

In those cases people will probably want to buy our galvanized staples or even paint the top of our regular landscape staples if used for decorative reasons (but be careful as most paint can be toxic to the soil, water table, and possibly your plants.)

You should think about your own personal usage patterns and decide if galvanized or regular staples will best meet your needs.

You can buy both our regular and galvanized landscape staples here on Amazon. They come in packs of 50, 75, 100, and 150 so you can buy as many as you need to complete your gardening or landscaping plans.

That was probably more than you ever wanted to know about garden staples 😉 but we thought we'd pass along what we've learned from using them ourselves and from what other customers have told us.

Happy Gardening, and thanks again for your business! 🙂