From Team Fortress Wiki

“ — Market Gardener publicity blurb As the soldiers' need for a digging implement for graves, latrines and trenches increased to include hedgerows, shrubberies and officers' golf courses, the Army stepped up development of its standard issue digging tools to make them smaller and more effective. ”

The Market Gardener is a community-created melee weapon for the Soldier. It is an entrenching shovel with a tan wooden handle fastened with green metal.

The Market Gardener deals critical hits to enemies whilst the wielder is rocket jumping (or otherwise airborne via explosion), but cannot randomly crit. Compared to the default Shovel, the Market Gardener has a 20% slower swinging speed.

Damage and function times

Identical to: Shovel

Damage and function times Damage type Melee Ranged or Melee damage? Melee Damage Base damage 100% 65 Critical 195 Mini-crit 88 Function times Attack interval 0.96 s Values are approximate and determined by community testing.

Item set

Demonstration

Crafting

Blueprint

As a crafting ingredient

Strange variant





Related achievements

Trench Warfare

Kill your nemesis with a shovel.

June 23, 2011 Patch (Über Update)

The Market Gardener was added to the game.

June 28, 2011 Patch

Added/Refined recoil/draw/crit/reload forces for the Market Gardener.

May 17, 2012 Patch

[Undocumented] Added Strange quality.

September 4, 2012 Patch

The Market Gardener now uses Shovel sounds.

November 12, 2013 Patch

December 17, 2015 Patch (Tough Break Update)

Changed attribute: Added 20% Attack Speed penalty.



Bugs

The state of "launched by explosion" can be prolonged by jumping at the exact moment the player lands (bunnyhopping), which allows the weapon to crit after technically landing, and can theoretically be extended indefinitely.

There is sometimes a glitch when playing the game with DirectX8 that causes the model to flip backwards.

Trivia

The real life counterpart to the Market Gardener is the M-1951 Entrenching Tool.

The name of this item comes from Operation Market Garden, a (failed) operation consisting of an Allied paradrop around the Dutch cities of Eindhoven, Nijmegen, and Arnhem to capture key bridges and a ground attack to move over said captured bridges, that occurred during World War II.

Gallery