Four Garden Gadgets to Put on Your Wish List
You don't need to buy every garden gadget out there, but these four will help your plants thrive with less chemicals and for less money
Depending on where you live, gardening season is in full swing -- and catalogs full of the latest garden gadgets are in mailboxes and on websites everywhere. Buying them all is tempting, especially if you have a particularly brown thumb and buying anything to make that thumb greener is up your alley.
But gardening only requires a few basic items: good soil, a water source, a shovel and tiller, seeds or seedlings, plant food, and something to keep the critters from eating your crop. These four garden gadgets help out with one or more of these basic gardening needs.
Four garden gadgets that help you succeed
There are many composters available for residential use, but this Earthmaker Aerobic Composter from Exaco Trading is one of the best. Feed it a mix of carbon materials (kitchen scraps, grass clippings, egg shells) and nitrogen (crumpled brown leaves, newspaper strips, hair) and leave it alone. Its unique three-chamber design requires no aerating or stirring.
Gravity keeps the unfinished waste on top, and drops the finished compost to the bottom. Simply pull out the bottom floor panel once a month allowing the material to drop into the next chamber, and use the compost. This natural fertilizer is excellent for your garden, and helps keep re-usable waste out of our landfills.
If you've often wished that you could save the April rains for use during a July drought, now you can! Over the past decade, a variety of companies have manufactured rain water storage units, built to save rain water for gardening use. As they evolved, they became better, with additions such as screens preventing bugs and leaves from collecting, and more practical placement of the garden hose attachment.
Yet, their appearance usually played second fiddle to their practicality. Until now, that is. This Agua System from Algreen is actually pretty and functional, and even features a planter on top for further camouflage in your garden. At a capacity of fifty gallons, this can store quite a bit of water.
Ants, slugs, bunnies -- there are a multitude of critters in your yard, just waiting to feast on your garden crop. The Topsy Turvy planter cuts down on leaves with teeth marks and half-chewed tomatoes by putting the plants high above most pests. These do get heavy, so be sure to hang them on sturdy planter poles, and water frequently to make up for evaporation. These planters also allow gardeners with a small yard or even just a patio to partake in the harvest.
At last, somebody has finally invented an easy-to-use, automated gardener's helper! The EasyBloom Plant Sensor takes the guesswork out of figuring out which plants will thrive in your particular yard. The in-ground sensor analyzes growing conditions in the specific spot you plant it, including sunlight, temperature, humidity, and soil drainage. After 24 hours, you plug it into your computer USB port, and it turns the analysis into recommendations for particular plants that will thrive in your yard.
You don't need every garden gadget ever invented to make your garden grow, but these four will certainly help you save time and frustration.