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Archive for the ‘Tools of the Trade’

New Life for Old Garden Hoses

January 12, 2011 By: VK Melhado Category: Tools of the Trade

When your old garden hose is worn and in poor repair, don’t throw it out. Garden hoses can be used in a number of ways and will remain useful long after they cease being used for watering your lawn.

Here are just a few inspiring ideas for your old hoses:

Protect Young Trees: When supporting young trees, cut a piece of garden hose and run wire through to attach to support stakes. The hose prevents the wire from damaging your saplings.

Earwig Trap: Earwigs love to hide in small, dark places. Place 6-inch pieces of hose in your garden to attract these nasty insects. Later shake them free into a bucket of soapy water.

Garage Buffers: Especially helpful for new drivers in the household, screw lengths of hose at bumper level to corners of the garage door frame to prevent unsightly dents in the trim.

Soaker Hoses: Make your own soaker hose by crimping the open end and drilling some holes throughout the hose. Bury it just under the soil around your plants and fill with water. It will keep your plants watered for days.
Water Level: Walter Reeves, the host of TV’s Garden Sense, transformed his garden hose into a giant water level in order to set an even grade for his patio. He attached 3-foot pieces of clear vinyl to each end of the hose and filled it with colored water.

Tool Hanger: Halve a 2 foot segment of hose and screw both ends to a wall. It creates a hanger that will hug the handles of your tools.

Blade Protector: Slit a length of hose and slide it over the teeth edge of your handsaw to protect the blade when not in use. This also works great with knife or ice skate blades.

Bucket Handle: Slip a piece of hose through the wire handle of a bucket or paint can to provide a better grip.
Swing Protector: Slide a length of swing-set chains through garden hose to protect little fingers when swinging.

Faucet Extension: Bury lengths of linked hose underground to relocate an outdoor spigot to a more useable location.

Snake Scare: Create a snake decoy to frighten away annoying flocks of birds. Cut a short length of hose and lay it on the grass in a snake position. It fools them everytime.

Downspout De-Clogger: Push the hose up through a clogged downspout allowing the water from the gutter to drain and carry away any trapped debris.

Play Telephone: Make an old-fashioned play telephone for the kids. Cut a length of hose and attach a funnel to each end with duct tape. Let the kids chat all they want.

Landscaping Tool: When laying out a new garden, use a length of garden hose to create the initial outline and then dig around it.

Curve Sander: Hose works great as a sanding tool for tight curves such as trim or crown molding. Take a length of hose, split it lengthwise and insert one edge of the sandpaper. Wrap it around the hose, trim to fit and insert the other end in the slit. Close the slit with some duct tape and get sanding!

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Getting Gardening Gloves

January 08, 2011 By: Jon Simms Category: Tools of the Trade

Here are the major reasons why one should consider getting a pair of trusty gardening gloves:

Gloves protect your hands from blisters, thorns and cuts while doing rough work like digging or pruning in the garden. Investing in one or more pairs of quality gloves is a good decision.

Here are some tips on how to choose the pair that will suit you best:

1. Look for quality leather gloves with a cloth back; this will let the gloves breathe and keep your hands dry, cool and comfortable.

2. If mud bothers you, select rubber gloves with cotton lining.

3. When spraying pesticides or chemicals choose gloves that are made from neoprene. Gloves made from latex or any type of plastic may not offer the best protection.

4. When pruning roses, use gloves that reach up to the arms.

5. If you usually operate large garden machinery, buy gloves in brown instead of red as the latter may dye your hands.

6. Light cotton or even fingerless gloves may be useful for transplanting seedlings. They will allow more dexterity and so help to prevent the tiny roots from being crushed.

7. And of course, make sure that the gloves you buy actually fit your hands. If you have small hands, try the children’s gardening section. there’s nothing worse than trying to garden is gloves that are too big.
Your gloves must be comfortable as well as give protection to best serve your gardening needs.

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Innovative Recycled Garden Tools

November 13, 2010 By: James Brown Category: Tools of the Trade

Having your very own home garden does not only translate to sweating under the intense heat of the sun toiling, weeding and growing flowers and plants but would also mean spending your hard earned cash on home garden tools that may not at all come that cheap. But then again, there is a way around these costs. There always is, if you are imaginative and innovative enough. You may not even have to look and search that far. Your kitchen or perhaps your waste basket may hold the very solution to your garden tools expense predicament. No need to mop and think long and hard on how. Here are a few creative tips.

Yogurt containers usually go straight to the trash as soon as we scoop out that last spoon of yummy yogurt. But hold up, there might be more to these plastic tubs than meets the eye. These yogurt containers can be great sanctuaries for your seedlings protecting them from those nosy good for nothing night-crawling cutworms. Working as a shield, sink these tubs into your soil enclosing the seedlings in. You can strip off the yogurt shield as soon as the seeds are able to grow sturdy stems.

These small plastic pots can also be used as cute flower pots. Just make sure to punch in a few holes in them to allow the soil to breathe and also to release excess water. Moreover, if you are looking for something to help you scoop up your soil or fertilizers, these yogurt containers may be your best bet.

If the yogurt container can make do as a small scoop, the plastic milk jug may be employed as its bigger version. This jug has a lot of flexible uses for your home garden. Mixing and sprinkling liquid fertilizer to your home grown plants is easy and trouble-free with the use of a milk jug. Simply put the fertilizer ingredients in, shake to blend, poke some holes on the top and you are set to shower your plants with nutrients. If frosty and chilly seasons have caused you to lose your baby seedlings and underdeveloped plants, the plastic milk jug may pose to be a solution to your problem. By covering your plants with the jug (make sure to remove the bottom of course) heat is stored and retained for the plants. What is more, you have the option to adjust the warmth of your plastic mini conservatory by opening or closing the cap.

If you think your egg cartons can offer no help in your home garden, think again! These containers are known to be perfect for growing seedlings. Using the Styrofoam ones are more preferred and it is important that you wash and clean them well before use so that you can prevent any bacterial contamination. Punch a hole on the base of each cell to allow for drainage.

It is essential that your home garden plants get at least an inch of water in a week. While figuring the volume of water your plants get may seem like a difficult endeavor, it is actually not. You may use those straight-sided tuna cans in collecting or measuring if your home garden is getting enough rain or sprinkler water.

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About James Brown
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Gardening: Gardening Tools – An Overview

October 28, 2010 By: Nicholas Tan Category: Tools of the Trade

I think you know very well about the rules and regulations to keep your plants to grow healthy in your garden. For getting sustainable growth of your garden plants you do require good soil quality, sunlight and sufficient water. Although these items have been gifted by nature, you ought to require modern gardening tools to upkeep your garden in a good state. Gardening tools help a lot in taking care of your plants as well as the good growing conditions and positive effect on your plant’s health.

Defective gardening tools might have cause injury on your plants or cut your plants or totally plug your plants from the soil. In order to prevent the occurrence of such untoward incident, it is a must to look for the best gardening tools, which will provide your plants loving tender care. Once you called a tool as ‘Best gardening tools”, it refers to a tool, which will permit labor saving methods and that allows energy efficiency.

Here you can see some of the best gardening tools available in the market to provide a better care than ever for your plants in the garden. (more…)

All Garden Tools Are Not Created Equal

September 26, 2010 By: Vera Pappas Category: Tools of the Trade

Tools, all gardeners need them, but which tools to buy? What tools will I really use? A good quality tool will get much more use and will last much longer, than a tool you bought just because it was on sale.

The following is a list of Garden Tools all gardeners should have in their shed:

Wheelbarrow- A tough, lightweight wheelbarrow is a must. A 5-6 cubic foot bin that is made of plastic (I know plastic, yuck) will last 100 times longer and be much lighter than a steel bin. This will enable you to move larger, heavier items with ease.

Rakes – Rakes are essential for good gardening. A leaf rake 24″ or 30″ is standard. I like a metal rake, because it gets through wet, heavy leaves easily. A shrub rake is a great thing to have for getting in between and under bushes. It’s usually only 10″-12″ in width. A hard rake is necessary for grading and leveling soil and mulch. (more…)

Best Quality Gardening Equipment

September 19, 2010 By: Percy Troughton Category: Gardens - Rain, Tools of the Trade

Quality gardening equipment is exactly what any dedicated gardener could use. However, it is not always possible to rush right out and spend hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of dollars on the latest and greatest gardening equipment. That is where improvisation comes in. A good gardener definitely knows how to improvise. The following paragraphs will discuss gardening equipment in general, as well as touch on the basic gardening equipment a good gardener will need.

As a gardener, there are some basic pieces of gardening equipment you will likely need at one time or another. This equipment includes, a hoe, a shovel, a rake, and maybe even a small hand shovel. It is not enough just to have these you must make sure they are good quality.

If you have these basic pieces of equipment, you are good to go. However, if you have bushes, hedges, or vine style ground cover, a good pair of pruning scissors could prove extremely helpful. While only the basic gardening equipment is necessary, some garden equipment can make the hard work of gardening much easier. If you have been gardening for years, chances are you have accumulated so much garden equipment that your shed is overflowing with it. (more…)

5 Pieces Of Equipment Every Gardener Needs

September 11, 2010 By: Herbert Roberts Category: Tools of the Trade

For your landscaping and gardening hobby to be fun and relaxing, it needs to be easy. That doesn’t mean their should be no work involved. Gardening is hard work. But honest hard work is relaxing and rewarding for many people. But it should not be frustrating. So start small. Landscaping for small gardens or flower beds is easy for most people and a good way to get into the hobby.

But even landscaping for small gardens requires dedication and lots of time and effort. There will be many trials and errors along the way. But in the end you can be rewarded with beauty and the satisfaction of a job well done.

One of the key elements in getting to this happy ending is having a good start. A good start requires the right tools. There are 5 pieces of equipment which all gardeners need to invest in before they turn over that first piece of dirt. (more…)

Garden Tiller – What Type Do You Need

September 07, 2010 By: Mike Tucker Category: Tools of the Trade

Well it’s that time of year again to start busting up your garden soil and start your planting. How you do that is up to you. If you need the exercise or have a very small garden you could always do it by hand.

To save your back and knees you could go with a stand up manual garden till like the famous garden weasel. It is cheap and easy to use.

For medium or large gardens you are going to need a garden tiller with a little more power than your arms. So what type of tiller do you buy?

If you have a smaller or confined garden you will want to go with something maneuverable like an electric mini tiller or cultivator. Or maybe a small 2hp gas model. Most of them are lightweight and very easy to handle. Cost on them is reasonable too for the amount of work they will save you. (more…)

Carhartt Work Jackets For Gardening

August 09, 2010 By: Mike Girolami Category: Tools of the Trade

Carhartt work jackets are famous for their long shelf life, unmatched durability and utmost comfort. The company, which has been producing excellent products for the past hundred years or more, is reckoned the world over for its state of the art jackets. So, if you have made up your mind to purchase Carhartt work jackets, you needn’t stick a particular place for Carhartt Jackets can be bought from various locations. Let us throw more light on the shopping aspect.

You Can Get Carhartt Work Jackets From A Company Showroom:

The best place to purchase Carhartt work jackets is through a company showroom. Well, if you have a traditional brick and mortar set up near you house, all you need to do is step out and get one for yourself. The advantage of purchasing a jacket from a company showroom is the ease of flexibility. In simple words, if in case you dislike the style or fail to fit into the product, you can always choose to exchange it with a better style or a larger product. (more…)

Selecting And Purchasing Right Garden Tools For Your Garden!

August 08, 2010 By: Julie Cadence Category: Tools of the Trade

There are thousands of garden tools available in the market and every individual tool has its own specialty so far as its use and handling skills are concerned. You may need to use different tools in different gardening circumstances and in certain scenario you may not need to use certain garden tools and in some other gardening circumstance you have to use certain garden tools. But owning every gardening tool that you see in the market may improve the look and feel of your gardening tool shed, but you need not to use all the gardening tools frequently unless you are a garden professional and provide gardening services. So this article will guide you how to select basic garden tools that would help you accomplishing most of your gardening activities. Selection of garden tools mostly depends on the type of garden you work at and its surroundings, soil and nearby vegetation. By analyzing hundreds of garden tools, I’ve made a list of 10 basic gardening tools.

The list of garden tools follows here:   (more…)

Are Your Trying To Find The Best Gardeing Tools

July 31, 2010 By: Jon Simms Category: Tools of the Trade

Different kinds of gardens require different kinds of garden tools. Hardware stores mostly cater for a wide range of tools, but there are shops that specialize in the more expensive kind of garden tool that shouts quality. Wherever you decide to shop, here are a few pointers to advise you.

Do you have small garden or a large one? A small garden will not require the same large equipment that would be of use in an extensive one. A ride-on mower is unnecessary if you only have a small strip of lawn. Another point to consider is who does most of the gardening? Some tools are too heavy for use by women.

When you buy secateurs make sure the blade always stays sharp to avoid damaging the plant. Look for models that have blades that can be sharpened or replaced, models with tension control and with sizes that best fit your hands. Secateurs usually cost around $50 – $130. (more…)

Tools

July 27, 2010 By: Robert Bell Category: Tools of the Trade

When you start work on any kind of construction project it is important to first make sure that you have the right kind of tools, and that you know how to use those tools. Luckily the internet is here to help. With product price comparison technologies, the prices of tools on the internet has truly plummeted. It is now possible to find high quality tools for literally a third or less of what you might have paid at your local hardware store just a few years ago. One of the other nice benefits of this evolution is that our local hardware stores have had to reduce their prices (at least somewhat) to compete with the new online stores. True, often times you have to pay shipping charges, but many stores offer free shipping or shipping programs like Amazon prime where you just pay a yearly fee that is relatively small and then get all your products shipped for free. In the case of Amazon, it is especially nice because that free shipping is Fed Ex 2 day shipping which means you will get your product quickly (they actually also charge just $3.99 if you want your product sent by overnight mail!). (more…)

Are Ergonomic Garden Tools For Everyone?

July 18, 2010 By: Hank Gordon Category: Tools of the Trade

Gardening is a fruitful and rewarding activity and it is one of the most favored and popular pastimes. People have been gardening for centuries and have been producing the most wonderful fresh vegetables, delicious fruits and beautiful flowers they could. They where using all types of garden tools and some are easy to use and others put more strain on the human body.

There are hundreds of garden tools to choose from and because these tools will last for many years it is wise to think about the kind of material you buy. Ergonomic garden tools are usually recommend to people with small disabilities or chronic pain problems like with arthritis. But are they useless if you are perfectly healthy? The answer is of course no, they are not useless they are often the right choice for every gardener that would like to stay healthy and we should consider buying these ergonomic garden tools much more. (more…)

Word of the Day: pruning saw

July 07, 2010 By: Garden Dictionary Category: Garden Dictionary, Tools of the Trade

A saw with a relatively long and narrow cutting blade that can get into tight places.
pruning saw

Tips For New Gardeners Part 1 – Essential Tools

June 25, 2010 By: Kevin Woodward Category: Tools of the Trade

Getting out into the garden is increasingly popular once more, many people find that it helps them to relax and there is a sense of satisfaction as you see your plants grow and your garden develop into something special. In this series of articles I will introduce new gardeners to the art of gardening. It is not something that can be learnt overnight, but that is part of the appeal. There is always something new to learn, no matter how old, young or experienced you are!

Clearly, you are going to need some tools to get started. When you go to the Garden Centre or the hardware shop to buy your first set of garden tools, you will be faced with a bewildering array. So what do you really need? The first question to ask is “am I a vegetable gardener, an ornamental gardener or both?” For most people, the answer will probably be both, a lot depends on the size of your garden and why you want to garden. So this set of tools should cover both needs and assumes that you are starting a garden from scratch – just a bare patch of ground, no hedges, shrubs, lawn etc. (more…)

Watering with the Right Gardening Tools

June 12, 2010 By: Benedict Yossarian Category: Tools of the Trade, Watering Needs

Why Choosing Helps

Like any job, the most efficient way to take care of a garden is with the right set of tools. This is why if you are planning on having a garden, you should first prepare yourself with the knowledge of what tools you need. If you already have a garden but it is not flourishing in the way you want it to, then you should re-evaluate the tools you use and how efficiently they can help you with your gardening tasks. The right tools for gardening will help you in many wonderful ways, but the wrong set of tools could spell the end for your garden. (more…)

Using Gardening Gloves

June 07, 2010 By: Jasper Sayer Category: Tools of the Trade

One of the best things about gardening is felling warm, moist dirt in your bare hands, but you will often end up with blistered, chapped, and scraped skin. The solution to this problem is gardening gloves. The more time you spend getting down and dirty in the garden, the more you need gardening gloves. Gardening gloves will be able to ease some of the pain you would otherwise be subject to, letting you spend even more time playing in the dirt.

There are hundreds of different types of gloves on the market, and the kind of gardening glove you buy depends on the way you garden. Some gloves offer protection against specific substances or things, for example, leather gloves are not the best for working with chemicals or water. Many gardening gloves are specialized for pruning thorns, refilling gasoline tanks, or using a chain saw, while others are for general tasks such as raking, digging, and weeding. (more…)

Using proper ergonomic garden tools is very important

May 30, 2010 By: Hank Gordon Category: Tools of the Trade

People have been gardening for centuries and not just as a fun and enjoyable hobby but often to produce fresh vegetables and fruits and other plants for human consumption. Together with this productive kind of gardening a type of gardening has grown that is just for the pleasure of the gardener and the visitors of the garden. These types of gardens often contain threes, shrubs and lots of flowers. But for both type of gardens one thing remains the same, you need to keep working in your garden to get the best results. And for gardening you need tools, big tools, power tools, small tools and hand tools.

There are hundreds of tools but in this article we want to talk about the ergonomic garden tools in general and ergonomic power tools in particular because they are truly essential to get started in gardening. The big landscaping chores that need to be done when you start with a new garden are essential because when you hurt your back in this stage of gardening you are going to end up with an aversion against gardening all together. Are there ergonomic garden tools that can make the job much easier? (more…)

Word of the Day: pruning shears

May 20, 2010 By: Garden Dictionary Category: Garden Dictionary, Tools of the Trade

Handheld pruners, used for removing small twigs, stems, and branches.

The Work Glove: A Forgotten Safety Tool

May 17, 2010 By: Kimberly Roberts Category: Tools of the Trade

Today, construction and industrial development is a way of life for a majority of the world’s population. Safety measures are continually improving for construction and industrial workers. One of the most important developments in safety equipment for these workers is job-specific work gloves.

Take a look at a few of the many types of gloves available for various industries:

Disposable Gloves – Available in many sizes and thicknesses, these gloves are typically found in the food service and medical industry. Polyethylene and vinyl gloves are commonly used in food service industries, offering comfort and breathe-ability in general purpose applications, such as food processing. Latex gloves are typically found in the medical industry, offering protection against chemical processing and the handling of acids and caustics. Disposable gloves are also used in industries requiring metal treatment, paint and varnish manufacturing, petrochemical and oil refining, the handling of rough castings and steel bars, the use of electronics, light assembly, inspection and quality control. (more…)