It's the The Final Mowdown!

Today I took the mower out for a final spin in the balmy 60 degree weather before closing shop over the winter. I'm sure the mower was appreciative of the action as it had rested in my garage for a month gathering dust. It was a good day. It was just the mower and me, man and machine, making the final cut against the waning weeds and the odoriferous onions. Most of the heat thriving weeds and grasses had faded to that lovely dormant brown color and had given way to the bright green of my fresh cool season Kentucky 31. It's young and thriving, growing strong in the cool fall temperatures!

On we rode, up the slopes and back down again, feeling the rush of the wind on the number two speed setting. Over the bumps we careened like some mechanical bull in a seedy western bar, but the grass was grateful for our passage since in our journey we brought light to the lower levels of the lawn. We chopped down the tall creeping crabgrass and cool weather weeds and allowed the sunlight to stream down upon the young blades of fescue. We rode and we rode until there was only a little more to mow.

The riding mower deserved its rest and so out came his distant cousin the mulching push mower, whose specialty was collecting organic matter for composting. We patrolled the borders of the garden beds looking for rogue weeds and grass threatening to escape the confines of the yard. Once these areas had been successfully contained we moved to the back of the landscape to attack the most serious and threatening invader to new fescue grass in the fall: the leaves. Those paratrooping invaders threatened the well being of any grass unfortunate enough to remain shrouded in the darkness beneath their bulk. Left by themselves to decay the leaves would be a welcome influx of organic matter, but for now they had to be shredded or removed to allow light to reach the small blades of grass. The leaves were sucked into the gaping maw of the push mower and shredded, destined to become an addition to my compost bin. Some of the leaves collected ended up as mulch around trees and others became soil amendments to spots of bare ground plaguing the lawn. Many of these leaves remained where they fell and were summarily shredded. They will serve the ground well as shredded organic matter, improving the soil and giving a helping hand to the fescue that they had previously threatened.

For the mowers it was their final mowdown. The last hurrah before their long winter rest. One last chance to use up their gas and to trim the yard before the cold of winter shut everything down. For me it was one more time to enjoy being outside on a pleasant day.

One more thought:
Leaves are one of the best sources of compost material available. Don't let this resource go to waste. You can pile them up in an unused portion of your property, put them in a compost bin, leave them in place and mow them down into smaller bits. I hate to see people bag up the leaves for roadside collections. Or worse, when they burn them. It's a free resource that will make your landscape better if you use them right!

Leatherman Pruners?

I was looking on Amazon at some of the bestselling garden tools recently and I noticed this little tool that I found interesting: A Leatherman Pruning tool. It's a neat idea but as I pondered it I began to wonder exactly how useful it might be. Would it be able to replace my Swiss Army pocket knife I carry everywhere?

The Leatherman tool has pruners (which are a necessity in the garden), wire cutters, weed remover, grafting knife, bark lifter, Phillips screwdriver, saw, flat screwdriver, sprinkler tool, bottle opener, and a ruler. That's quite a few tools in one device but when I'm in the garden I usually don't need all of those tools very often. The one tool I would use the most would be the pruners which I'm pretty pleased with a pair of Fiskar pruners (Fiskars UltraBlade Traditional Bypass Pruner) I bought a couple months ago. I've needed wirecutters so rarely that I don't see need for them on the garden multitool tool, I'll just use the ones in my workbench. My Swiss army knife has the saw, screwdrivers, bottle opener and of course a more than adequate knife for whatever I need. The ruler would be handy but from seeing other Leatherman multitools I really think a good measuring tape is a much more functional choice. I'm trying to figure out what value the weed remover might be. In many cases killing weeds through boiling water, shovel, or simple weed pulling works fine. I doubt the weed remover is long enough to reach deep enough get to a dandelion or thistle taproot.

The multitool is missing one major garden tool which would make it much better, a simple pair of scissors. The scissors on my knife are one of the most useful tools I have. I use them for cuttings, for snipping twine, and for anything that needs a cut. I suppose the Leatherman tool is an attempt to help gardeners to reduce the amount of tools they carry in the garden. I'd rather just go with my pruners and my knife. Those two tools are much more functional paired together than one multitool and really aren't that inconvenient to carry, but that's just my opinion. What do you think? Is it a worthwhile tool for the garden or just a gimmick? What tools would you put in your Ultimate Garden Multitool?

And the Troy-Bilt Jet Leaf Blower Winner is...

First before I tell you who won the Jet Blower from Troy-Bilt I wanted to say thank you for entering! Giving stuff away is really one of the more exciting parts of blogging! The Jet is an easy to use leaf blower made by Troy-Bilt. The Jet easily blasts away grass clippings on driveways and leaves making cleaning up after yardwork a piece of cake. If you didn't win this JET but find yourself in need of a leaf blower you should be able to find it at your local home improvement centers for around $150.

The winner of the Jet was selected through a random number drawing between 1 and 20. (The total number of commenters on the review post.) The lucky winner was the eighth commenter, Emily Rose! Emily please send me an email (TheHomeGarden@gmail.com) with the your shipping address and phone number and I'll relay that information to Troy-Bilt. Congratulations!

Thank you again for entering and for reading GrowingTheHomeGarden.com!

Organizing a Gardeners Garage

What does a gardener's garage look like?  Before you put an image into your mind please realize that the photo I'm about to show you is extremely embarrassing.  My garage has never been a priority for me - the garden has been!  When you add three kids to the mix who never seem to be able to put something back where they got it from you have a recipe for a messy garage.  But thankfully Lowe's and Creative Ideas are giving me the motivation to tackle this unorganized disaster area.  I'll show you the before photos in a moment, but first let me tell you what we use our garage area for and it isn't for cars.  We don't park there, even though we would love to, our garage is an activity/storage area.  For me the garage is where I have grow lights set up and where I start my seedlings for my business.   It's also where the tools go - both for gardening and for other assorted purposes. For the kids it's where they get their toys and their bikes.  For my wife the garage is somewhere she passes through to get inside the house while trying not to think about the mess!

The garage is full of pots, plant tables, shelves, a refrigerator and freezer, numerous storage crates with clothing we'll never wear again, old college books, and all kinds of junk.  We aren't candidates for one of those reality TV shows that highlights extreme packrats - we're not that bad - but the mess is frustrating to work around.  To tackle some of this issue we decided to organize one very common use for the garage that will help us manage things just a little bit better - shoes!  Yes this is still a gardening blog but I am going to talk about our shoes.  The five of us have accumulated a large collection of frequently and infrequently worn footwear.  Boots, tennis shoes, flip flops, and mocs all times five.  We have to have somewhere to put them where they aren't in the way and can be put on conveniently for all our activities.  So here's the target area:

The target itself is the corner between the door and the right wall.  This is where I'm going to put together a bench for sitting on with an area for shoe storage underneath.  Right now there is a bookshelf in that corner where the shoes area kept.  It will be moved and used to store the kids toys and garden tools and the shelf in the middle will once again go back to housing gardening equipment!  You see there is a gardening aspect to this after all - I get to reclaim lost space for storing my gardening gear.  Now I don't want you to think I'm a complete organizing disaster (although I'm sure my wife will argue differently) so I'd like to show you the way I organize my tools.

It's a nifty little track system from Rubbermaid that I bought from Lowe's a while back.  It holds up most of my gardening tools and keeps them from getting in the way.  It's a 4 foot long track system where you can attach different types of hooks.  I'd like to install a few more of these around the garage for other tool areas.

I hope the bench turns out as nicely as I have it made in my head!  I've already set most of this project into motion and hope to complete another section of it later today.  Come back and see what the result is and if it will actually help keep me organized!

5 Essential Garden Tools

For a look at what I think are 5 Essential Garden Tools go read my guest post on the Home Remodeling & Home Renovation (fixR) Blog!

A Challenge for Any Glove Manufacturer

Today I'm issuing a challenge to any glove maker, manufacturer, or garden handware retailer: Make me a glove that lasts longer than 5 months! I'm throwing down the gauntlet, or the garden gloves as the case may be. So far I have not met a pair of gloves that lasts more than a few months. This pair of gloves was purchased back in February but began unraveling at the seams about six weeks ago. You can see the sad and sorry state this pair of gardener handware is in below.

I really like this type of glove but I fear they are destined to bring me constant disappointment. The leather palms are tough and protect against sharp weeds and rocks while the flexible fabric on the back of the hand lets your hand breathe better than it would in pure leather gloves. The problem is they just don't last and its not just this pair of gloves. Last year I went through four pairs of gloves and wore holes into all of them. One pair was like these, but the others were made from leather. This year I've blown through two pairs of gloves and I still have several more months to go before the garden season is over. Is this normal or am I just really hard on gloves?

What I need are gloves made from Kevlar. Something bullet proof, or at least Dave-proof. Rubber gloves don't last, leather gloves get worn out, fabric gloves are practically worthless as they allow sharp thorns to pierce all the way through to the hand. Perhaps I really need that gauntlet, steel reinforced gloves with chainmail for flexibility. That wouldn't be work either; too many holes and the hot summer sun would grill my hands like hot dogs on the Fourth of July!

So what's the answer? Is there a glove maker out there who has the perfect set of gloves that can take the wear and tear of this gardener? Is there a true gardener's glove that will last through at least six months?


What would make that perfect set of garden gloves? 

• It would hold up to regular daily weeding. 
• It would resist the rigors of occasional stone and paving stone lifting, moving, and setting. 
• It would be flexible so that manual finger dexterity was not severely reduced. 
• It would turn away thorns and briers making picking fruit from raspberries and blackberries or pruning roses easy work. 
• It would be resistant to water preventing it from hardening up into a permanent claw. 
• It would keep all my fingers inside!
  

So tell me Mr. Glove Manufacturer, does my glove exist?

How to Weed Between the Cracks of a Patio

Many people have patios with permeable materials like sand and pea gravel in the cracks. These patios are open invitations for weeds that decide to drop in and make themselves at home in those cracks! It doesn't take anymore than a seed to sprout an annoyingly hard weed to pull out. There are many methods that will work to clean out the cracks like a high concentration of vinegar, boiling water, and yes even herbicides (I don't like those too much) but how about a mechanical method?


This weekend I took out an old metal mop handle and put it to a new use. By flattening out the exposed metal end, a sharp and narrow headed hoe was created!


It may not look pretty but it was a perfect tool for severing those weeds from their roots. A periodic sharpening with a file will keep the blade end sharp (a good thing to do with shovels also).



Of course you could go out and spend $15 on a brand new hoe...

One of My Favorite Garden Tools: My Swiss Army Knife

This may be an unusual tool to consider a garden tool but I have found my Swiss Army Knifevery useful in the garden. As you probably know Swiss Army Knives have many useful attachments from the knife itself to toothpicks. I don't use the toothpick at all but there are many other parts I use frequently.

In the picture below you can see what I consider to be one of the most useful parts of the knife, the scissors. I use the scissors for a number of things related to pruning. Mostly I take softwood cuttings with the scissors. If it's too thick for the scissors to cut I'll use my pruners that are much more substantial but for perennials these are more than sufficient. They do well as a small pair of pruners for trimming the small stuff. Of course using the scissors for what they are intended is great too! Cutting twine and string, plant tags, and all sorts of miscellaneous things.


I don't use the knife as often as the scissors but it does come in handy for cutting open bags of mulch and would come in very handy for grafting. Grafting is something I would like to attempt eventually. Grafting is basically where you take a branch of one plant and attach it to another plant's branches or root stock. Think of it like an organ transplant except it is not nearly complicated.


This little attachment has two functions. A flathead screwdriver and a bottle opener. I've used the flathead screwdriver for all sorts of things but most recently I did some hose repair that required a flathead screwdriver. It also has a Phillip's head attachment that I use that isn't pictured. Now what could that bottle opener possibly open?


It even has a handy little saw blade. I haven't used it for anything but it is nice to know I have it when I need it.


There are other attachments like nail files, tweezers (great for removing splinters), a leather punch (I use it for poking holes in containers that don't have drainage holes), and a can opener. There are all kinds of knives out there with various functions. Many knives have more functions than mine does and several have less but this knife is a very handle tool for me in the garden. Do you have an unusual tool that wasn't meant specifically for the garden that you like to use in the garden?

Time to Mow? (Lawnmower Preparation Time !)

As old man winter starts to blow what will hopefully be his last breath this weekend I can look out my window at my yard and see the first mowing coming soon. Perhaps I should have already done the first mowing. Our unkempt clumps of grass are reminders of the upcoming work to be done in the season ahead. From my perspective the mowing isn't work, I actually enjoy it. I hookup my MP3 player and mow away. Before I can get started on the lawn there is some prep work that needs done to my mowers.

1) General Cleanup. My mowers have been resting in the garage all winter covered in some of the dust of last summer. I cleaned them off a little bit before putting it in the garage but I could do a much more thorough job. I need to turn it over on it's side and wash off the bottom with the hose. I read where you can spray the bottom with vegetable oil to keep the grass clippings from sticking.

2) Change the oil. I probably should have done this in the fall but like so many people do I just never got around to it.

3) Cleanup and sharpen the blades. It's better for your grass to have sharp blades to cut the grass. That way the blade isn't ripping the grass apart and leaving uneven edges that turn brown in your yard. Disconnect the spark plug, empty the gas and turn the mower on it's side. Then remove the blade and take a file to sharpen the edges evenly on both sides. You may want to consider a replacing it with a mulching blade if you haven't already.

4) Check the spark plugs and clean or replace as necessary.

5) Check your lawn for sticks, stones and other things that need picked up. While your mower may chew them up fine they could hurtled dangerously toward unsuspecting bystanders. It's a good guess that anything that causes a loud thunk under your mower probably wasn't good for the blade so be careful!

Do you have any lawnmower tips to add to the one's above?

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