Must Have Luxury Garden Gadgets

Gardening and lawn care is so much more fun when you have all the latest gadgets and tools. You know you are truly prepared when you step outside in your lawn aerator shoes and wearable garden stool, rolling your pecan picker upper, with your trusty power drill auger at your hip! If you are the type of person who loves gadgets and gizmos as much as you love gardening, then you are in the right place. Make sure you are not missing out on any new gardening equipment that you did not know you could not live without!

For your hanging plants or container gardens, you should definitely have self watering planters. Some are stackable and help you easily create a self watering vertical garden. Imagine the neighbor’s envy! If you do not have self watering gardens, there is still a way to get excited about patio plants and container gardens.

I am talking about an electronic watering can that, in tests, helped plants produce anywhere from twenty percent to fifty-eight percent more vegetables. Flowers will grow much larger and produce more blooms with up to seventy-six percent more weight. How does it work? Oxygen. The oxygenating watering can uses an electrolysis element to increase the oxygen content of your water by up to one hundred fifty percent. It works, because the more oxygen that gets to the roots of your plants, the more nutrients they can take in.

Another must have is the electronic soil tester. It electronically measures moisture in the soil, soil pH, sunlight and the combined nitrogen, phosphorus and potash (NPK) fertilizer levels. If you are unsure about what all that means, never fear. It comes with a list of preferred conditions for different types of plants, so if you hide the list in your waterproof write in the rain garden notebook, no one will realize that you may not know what the levels mean. The electronic soil tester will help you decide what locations in your yard are ideal for certain plants, if the soil needs adjustment or if it is time to water.

Enough with the small stuff, we are moving on to the lawn. There are a lot of little individual gadgets that can help you with lawn care, but the automatic hose reel is definitely the hottest new gadget on the market. Not just any hose reel, this one has a computer. Program it to water, leave the house and it puts itself away when it is done. It has forward assist so you do not even have to pull it out. It rotates in all directions, retrieves the hose on its own and has the coolest gadgets inside. It has clamp on attachments, like a fireman’s spray nozzle, and it even clamps to the faucet, so you never have to twist or struggle with it. You won’t even break a sweat. It has a double o-ring design which makes it leak proof and a kink free hose. This one is far superior to any other hose reel on the market. Plus, it kind of looks like a robot and you can order it in a variety of cool patterns, like giant golf ball or Texas flag. This is not your ordinary hose reel. It will create envy in all that encounter it.

About the Author: Stacy Pessoney is an award winning author and writer of web content for many different web sites. She is well versed in many different areas, including gardening, hose reel, lawn care and landscaping.

Repairing a Garden Hose Leak

When a garden hose gets a leak, you may be tempted to just toss it and buy a replacement. But fixing a leaky garden hose is often fast and easy.

And remember the mantra “Reduce, reuse, recycle.” The words are actually in that order for a reason: to lessen your negative impact on the environment, it is most ideal to reduce the amount of things you have and use. It is second most ideal to reuse the things you have. Recycling things that you can no longer use is the third best option. And “throw it away and get a new one” is nowhere on the list! So, by repairing your leaky garden hose rather than running out to purchase a new one, you will also be doing your part to help lessen your environmental impact.

If your garden hose has just a small hole or crack in it, simple tape will be enough to fix it. If you have electrical tape, you can use that; or, if you prefer, you can buy some tape that is specially designed for garden hose repairs. This is available at home improvement warehouses. The first step is to clean and dry the hose; after that, simply wrap the tape around it to cover the hole or leak, making sure to overlap the tape and secure it well, but also being careful to not wrap it too tight.

If your garden hose is leaking at the spigot, just replace the washer. Because they can deteriorate, sometimes you will just need to swap out the old one for a new one. If you replace the washer and still have a leak at a spigot, then replace the coupling.

If your garden hose has a leak coming from a larger hole, it is still possible to repair it on your own. Again, when repairing a hose with a hole or crack in it, be sure the hose is clean and dry before you begin. A large hole or crack can be fixed by cutting that section out of the hose itself—make straight cuts with a sharpened blade while doing this, rather than using a sawing motion or a dull blade—then adding in a new part that attaches with clamps or crimps. These parts are available at home improvement warehouses. Be sure to take the damaged part of your hose with you so that you can buy the correct replacement.

Finally, to extend the life of your hoses, be sure to store them on hose reels, as they are unlikely to incur damage when they are neatly tucked away.

About the author: Jon Bassfarm is an Internet content writer who enjoys researching and writing about many subjects including garden hose reel and landscaping.