The crocus flowers and dandelions poking their heads through the grass are indicating that its time to get out in your lawn and get to work. To anyone who works at a home and garden retail store, it means it’s time to open up the garden center and prepare for the flood of folks looking for landscaping wares, both time-tested and novel. Here are 5 garden gadgets we think are worth buying for the upcoming year:
ThermaCell’s Mosquito Repellant Lantern
Get a head start on beating back those pesky mosquitoes by hanging some of these attractive lanterns around your yard. By using an odorless synthetic repellant, these lanterns keep the black flys and annoying bloodsuckers away, and manage to be attractive while doing so. Each one can clear a 175 square-foot area of the little buggers, making them perfect for if you’re working in a garden or enjoying the fruits of your labors when lounging in your backyard at night. These can be found online at ThermaCELL, or at their local retailers, which includes home and garden stores and big box stores.
PVC Pop-Up Garden Bag
If you’re tired of dragging around plastic trash bags that break, and don’t have space for a wheelbarrow, these durable, space-saving bags are great to have. They expand when needed to hold lots of debris, often up to 33 gallons worth. They won’t tear when you pick them up to move them, and are easy to dump and collapse back down to their convenient storage size.
Lawn Aerator Sandals
These gadgets have been around for years, and there’s no reason not to have a pair. Sure, they may look a bit goofy, but they do the trick, with little effort from you. Just strap them on your feet and go about your business – play with the dog, mow, do whatever you like, as long as you keep moving you’ll be aerating your lawn. Best of all, they’re quite a bit less expensive than an aerator that you push around, making them a great investment for lawn-keepers with small lawns, who lack storage space for another tool, or who just don’t want to put that much money out right now.
The TRAKE
What do you get when you combine a trowel and a rake? A TRAKE, of course! With a trowel at one end and a small plant rake at the other, this gadget eliminates the need to carry two or three different tools. Great for the casual gardener or the gardener who has too many tools and needs to consolidate a bit.
Garden Groom Pro
Sure, it looks futuristic and a bit out of place in your shed, but anyone who has to take care of shrubbery will benefit from this great gadget. Instead of using a hedge trimmer with exposed blades that are a bit on the dangerous side, and that throws clipping all over the place to be cleaned up later, this unit cuts, shreds, and collects the trimmings all at once, to be dumped into the trash or compost pile. Best of all, the cutting blades are inside a protective shell that keeps them away from your hands, but also away from being dropped or knocked on a hard surface that could dull or damage them. You can find the Midi, Pro, and other models at Garden Groom or other online retailers.
So if you want to do a bang-up job in your lawn and garden this season, you’ll want to pick up some if not all, of these handy gadgets. They’ll help you save time and labor, letting you get just as much done while having more time to enjoy your lawn after work.
