Planet-healthy lawn care is maturing into a viable alternative for small to medium sized lawns. Leading the charge are battery-powered mowers like the Neuton CE 6.2 — they’re quiet and feature zero-emission operation.
If you’ve ever seen what happens to a tarp left out in the sun too long, you know that ultraviolet light and plastics don’t get along. The tarps fade, flake, and generally just fall apart after their time in the sun. Krylon offers a spray-on product that provides a clear layer of protection for outdoor fabrics and plastics to keep them looking good longer.
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission today announced Honda Motor Corporation’s recall of over 20,000 HRX walk-behind lawn mowers. Honda reports that they’ve “received one report of a shield breaking off the lawn mower,” though the accident resulted in no injury.
The recall includes Honda models HRX217(K)2HXA and HRX217(K)2HMA mowers with serial numbers between MAGA-1500001 and 1520532. If you own one of the affected mowers, contact your local Honda Lawn and Garden dealer to schedule a free repair.
We dig multi-talented tools whose one function can be applied in many ways. Polyacrylamide crystals can “only” absorb 400 times their weight in water, but keeping your lawn wet is just one way they can make your life better. Here’s another great application: Sew a handful of the crystals into a scarf, soak it, and let the evaporation keep you cool.
Pounding tent stakes into hardpan, into tree roots, into rock — into just about every impossible plastic-stake-breaking, metal-stake-bending situation there is — has been an American pasttime for as long as camping has been. These ScrewPegs should take some of the pain out of the situation.
Thanks to reader Fred who pointed out the Billy Goat outdoor vacuum. If you want to go one step further — clean up the yard and mulch the big pieces as well — then check out this offering from Troy-Bilt. This multi-function chipper/shredder/vacuum can’t match the Billy Goat’s impressive vacuum statistics, but it’ll convert your lawn trash to a useful lawnscaping substance, which could be a good reason to stop and consider.
Street pricing for the CSV060 chipper/shredder/vacuum is as low as $540.
Chipper/Shredder/Vac [Troy-Bilt]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Around this time of year here in Texas the springtime rain has just about dried up and face-melting heat begins to burn its way into everything outside, including the lawn. To keep all that beautiful, green grass alive — the easy way — arm your sprinkler system with a sprinkler-control unit like the Rain Bird EC 9.
You’d like to illuminate that small outbuilding or garden shed in the back yard, but you don’t want the bother of running electric lines out to it. Instead you could install a solar-powered light like this one from SunForce.
Before “cordless power tools” we just burned gasoline to get the job done, and gas is still the easiest power source for remote locations where you need to draw heavy power. For instance, a big, gas-powered wet/dry vacuum can prove indispensable for lots of applications, like prospecting, archaeology, and prairie dog eviction — but I couldn’t find a gas-powered vacuum easily! However, I did find this DIY plan for one.
You start with a gas blower and a five-gallon bucket, and you end up with a big vacuum that recharges at the pump. With gas prices going up you might prefer a cheaper alternative — but if you really need the right tool for the job there may not be a substitute.
GasVac [Minin' Gold]
Giant Sucking Sound [CNN]
I dedicate this find to reader eschoendorff who thought the collapsible wheelbarrow was less than manly. Now you can replace your puny wheelbarrow with the Muck-truck, a four-wheel-drive, hand-driven dump truck with all-terrain tires that can handle any surface you throw at it, including snow, mud, and sand.
After spotting the Blade Buster mower-blade clamp, I began to think that using my boot to stop the blade from turning might not be the best idea. Usually when I service the blade I pull the plug wire, wedge my boot between the blade, and break the nut loose with a socket and 18″ breaker bar. Maybe my method isn’t the safest, though — especially if I forget the first step.
The Blade Buster clamps to both push and riding mower decks, stopping the blade from turning so you can safely remove and replace it without cutting up your footwear. A.M. Leonard claims their mower-blade clamp won’t damage your mower deck and takes only seconds to use.
The Blade Buster or a similar tool will cost you $8 to $10, but I have a hard time parting with my hard-earned money when I know there must be a better way. How you do change your mower blade? Let us know in the comments.
Blade Buster [A.M. Leonard]
Mower Blade Clamp [Lee Valley]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon(B0007LRPQE) [What’s This?] [What's This?]
You use your Sawzall all day on the job, so why not finish the yard work with it, too? With Milwaukee’s Sawzall pruning blades you can, and you can actually do a good job. Chuck these blades into your Sawzall or other brand of reciprocating saw to prune trees or saw green wood.
If you only have a small garden shed, a wheelbarrow can be a pretty big investment in space — but the WheelEasy LE collapsible cart from Allsop offers the functionality of a wheelbarrow for a fraction of the storage space.
Originally designed over 90 years ago, this weed puller saw action up until the Second World War, when steel and other materials were salvaged for the war effort. This takes us back to a time when you reached for a tool instead of a bottle of weed killer.
I remember a time before weed whackers — at least before my family had one — a time when men and women would crawl around the yard on their knees with a hand shear to trim the grass at the edge of the lawn. Whether it was a better time or just a simpler time may be up for debate, but if Fiskars’ long-handled swivel grass shears had been around, they would’ve spared us a lot of strained backs and sore knees.
Going green is well and good, but I’m more willing to look at an “eco-friendly” solution if it’ll also save me some money. And since saving water is saving money, I’m attracted to any tool that’ll help keep my new trees alive without making the water meter run. This root irrigator is just such a tool — it delivers water from your hose deep down into the dirt so it can’t just evaporate off. This method also encourages trees and bushes to develop stronger and deeper roots, so they’re tougher and more able to withstand dry spells.
Last year about this time we made a joke about the Rambo styling of a certain garden spade from Garrett Wade. This year a new contender may take the Rambo-gardening title: this Japanese digging knife. We don’t doubt that it’s handy — it looks like it could cut up some dirt, or fend off a tribe of deadly ninjas, without much trouble.
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