Screw it! I'm composting!

At least I hope I am. Because I started my fall lawn overseeding project late I ran into a problem. Leaves on an overseeded lawn. Normally I would just mulch mow leaves into the lawn but with the seedlings still small and fragile, they can't handle the mowing and leaving the leaves on the lawn would block the sunlight and air they need. After worrying about the grass seed germinating it finally started coming in.

I used my blower to concentrate the leaves in areas where I could rake without stepping on the lawn too much. I was careful to not disturb the soil and seedlings, just lightly comb the rake through the grass to remove the leaves. After seeing all the bags of leaves I had, it seemed like such a waste to put them out on the curb when they could be turned into a great soil ammendment for next year.

So I decided to learn about composting and determine what the best composter for me would be.

Reconditioned Black & Decker Edger LE750R On Sale

I just noticed that the Reconditioned version of the Black & Decker Edger LE750 (LE750R) Edge Hog Landscape Edger is on sale at a big discount and wanted to share that information.

This is my first season with the Edge Hog Electric Lawn Edger and I have been very happy with it. I purchased mine reconditioned as well. You can read my Black & Decker LE750 Edge Hog Review which I posted back in July.

It is currently on sale for $59.99. The item new sells for $109.99 and the normal refurbished price is $89.99. Shipping charges are very low.

Organic Starter Fertilizer

For a long time, there was no manufacturer selling an organic starter fertilizer product and to be honest, not many people cared. The only benefit of having something marketed as an organic starter fertilizer is to help those that are transitioning from synthetic fertilizers that are accustomed to grabbing something with that label when it's time to seed. In this post I'll discuss the one new product that's labelled as an organic starter fertilizer and the role of starter fertilizers in organic lawn care.

What is a Starter Fertilizer

In the synthetic fertilizer world, anything labeled starter fertilizer has one unique characteristic. It contains a higher proportion of phosphorous than the other fertilizers. Phosphorous is the middle number in the NPK guaranteed analysis on the bag of fertilizer. A starter fertilizer might have a guaranteed analysis of 11-23-10 where another fertilizer from the same like would have an analysis of 26-1-12.

Waiting for Grass To Grow

This is the tough part. I've completed my fall lawn overseeding project and have been watering it regularly. Now it's a waiting game to see if I did enough things right to have a great looking lawn.

It is agonizing. When I used to wake up in the morning and look outside my bedroom window I would smile because I had the nicest lawn I could see from that vantage but now it's the worst. Dethatching, pulling weeds and mowing the lawn very low in preparation for overseeding has really left the lawn looking terrible. My lawn has never looked as good as it did this past season and now there's this sinking feeling that I might have been better off leaving things the way they were.

I have a couple of things going against me. I started later than I wanted. Because of other circumstances I overseeded a few weeks later than I would have liked. The primary areas were overseeded with Jonathan Green Sod Maker Kentucky Blue Grass Seed Mix which takes about 6 weeks to germinate. The weather has been quite unusual this year and I was expecting the warmer days to continue for a while, unfortunately that's not the case. These past few days, and for the next few, the temperature is going to be quite low.

Luckily it's going to warm up again for a bit and hopefully stay that way until the seeds have germinated. Soil temperature also tends to be warmer than air temperature so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I was also planning on topdressing with compost but time and cost became a factor. It really sucks when you don't need enough to have it trucked in and buying that many bags of compost is expensive and would require multiple trips or renting a truck.

I shouldn't expect to see results so soon but until I start to see small new shoots of grass sprouting up I'm going to be anxious. In a short while I should start seeing little green hairs popping up in the shady areas where I used a shade mix that germinates faster and then a while after that start seeing the same in the areas that were overseeded with KBG. Worse case, a good portion of the seeds survive the winter and start to germinate in the spring if they don't germinate now. I didn't completely kill the existing lawn and it will start to recover from the very low mowing soon too.

Maintaining a healthy lawn is very difficult these days where we point, click and expect to see instant results. I had similar fears last spring when I aerated and overseeded and things turned out fine. That should be the case again but waiting for grass to grow is frustrating.

How To Store Organic Fertilizer

One of the nice things about using organic lawn fertilizers is that their safe and natural. Many of the ingredients are used in animal feed. If you're storing your organic fertilizer in your garage or shed you might be concerned about your pets or the local wildlife (mice, rats, squirels, racoons, skunks, deer, bears) sniffing it out and breaking through the bag. It is also important to keep the organic fertilizer dry so that it doesn't spoil.

The best and most affordable items I've found for storing dry organic fertilizers are the Iris Pet Food Containers. It makes sense since these fertilizers are essentially pet food. The Iris pet food storage containers are durable and airtight. They'll keep the fertilizer fresh and prevent any animals from smelling the "food" and getting in to it. Use the link above to order from Amazon which has the best prices I've seen and free shipping on most of the sizes you would need. It also looks like Iris products are made in the USA.

Fall Lawn Overseeding

Over the past few years I've been overseeding my lawn with better quality grass seed to improve the appearance and disease resistance of my lawn. Along with proper mowing, watering and a good organic lawn fertilizer program I have seen big improvements in my home lawn. I just completed overseeding my lawn for the fall and hopefully it will be the last time I need to do so for a while.

I got off to a late start but the soil temperature is still above 65 degrees which is very important. Normally I would have liked to start around early to middle September.

I've found a couple of seeds that I'm very happy with and decided to stick with, both are from Jonathan Green & Sons, Inc. They also contain no weed seeds or at least less than similar mixes from Scotts and have good germination rates in my lawn. I have one small area that receives very little direct sunlight which I have been using Jonathan Green's Dense Shade mix with good results. It contains the following varieties of seeds

• 39.25% Eugene Creeping Red Fescue
• 14.75% Hood Chewings Fescue
• 14.75% Carmen Chewings Fescue
• 9.83% Frontier Perennial Ryegrass
• 9.82% Darkstar Perennial Ryegrass
• 9.82% Blue Sapphire Kentucky Bluegrass
• 1.71% Inert Matter
• 0.04% Other Crop Seed
• 0.03% Weed Seed

The New Weed Hound Elite Size Does Matter

I prefer to use manual lawn and garden tools whenever I can. Especially when it's a tool that doesn't get used frequently. Not worrying about oiling, gassing, tuning, the amount of space it takes up and how much it costs are some of the benefits.

One drawback however is that I'm fairly tall and a lot of tools seem to be designed for people shorter than me. While I actually enjoy the exercise I get, sometimes my back tires out before the rest of my body. That little bit of extra bending I might have to do can really slow me down.

Ames True Temper, who recently bought Hound Dog Products, have released a new version of the popular Weed Hound called the Weed Hound Elite. One of the big differences is the new Weed Hound Elite is now 3" taller. Those extra 3 inches make it more comfortable to use by reducing the amount I have to bend over when using the Weed Hound Elite.

Black & Decker LE750 Edge Hog Review

I previously discussed the differences between string trimmers and edgers and some of the various options I was considering. In the past I was able to borrow an edger a few times a year but now I needed to get my own.

I finally decided on the Black & Decker LE750 Edge Hog 2-1/4 HP Electric Landscape Edger because I didn't want to deal with gas and I have less than 200' of edging to do.

The Hound Dog Steppin' Edger #HDP6-4 was a close second. I have other Hound Dog products that I'm happy with and I like to use manual tools when I can. They're cordless, very quiet and using them burns a few calories. I ultimately decided on a powered lawn edger to speed things up.

How To Build A Raised Garden Bed

Raised bed gardens don't exactly have much to do with lawn care but one thing that can help your lawn look better is to have it be part of a nice landscape plan.

This post isn't an instruction on how to build a particular type of raised garden bed. It is the information you need to know to be able to build any size or type of raised garden to suit your needs.

What Is Organic Lawn Care?

So I've been talking about organic lawn care quite a bit but never really discussed what organic lawn care means.

There is no official definition of organic lawn care so what it means will vary from person to person and some organic lawn care companies may not truly be organic by certain definitions. There are some standards that apply to organic production of crops and livestock such as the USDA National Organic Program, the Organic Consumers Association watchdog group and the Organic Materials Review Institute, a non-profit organization that approves products that may be used in certified organic production as per the USDA NOP. These programs and organizations focus on the production of organic fruits and vegetables, not lawn care specifically.

In this post I'll discuss some of the different meanings of organic lawn care and my own personal philosophy behind organic lawn care.

Aerating vs Dethatching When Overseeding

Good seed to soil contact is about as important as watering grass seed to get good germination rates when overseeding. Core aerating and dethatching are both recommended practices when you plant to overseed. But is it better to aerate or dethatch when overseeding?

I've done both in the past and in my opinion, dethatching will give you better results. This post contains my recommendations for dethatching and overseeding.

Use Rain Gauges To Save Water

A rain gauge is a device you place in your garden to see how much rain has fallen on your landscape in a given period. There are simple rain catchers as well as wireless electronic versions.

They help you accurately determine how much rain has fallen on your property which will help you save water. If you followed my advice on how to water your lawn, you already know how much water your lawn needs. A rain gauge will tell you how much rain fall you had so you can adjust your watering cycle so you can subtract the amount of time necessary to account for natural rain fall.

Make Your Own Soil Sampler

In quite a few of my posts, including my last one in how to water your lawn, I mentioned a soil probe sometimes called a soil sampler. It's a device used to pull a round section (core) out of your soil for examination.

It can give you a lot of information about your soil and comes in very handy if you need to see how deep your roots are, take samples to send to a lab, see how moist your soil is, etc. The design is pretty simple, just a tube with a cut out on one side. You push it down into the soil, twist it and pull it out. In the opening you can see your soil profile and grass roots. Or dump out the contents and play around with it. Mush it around, feel the texture. Whatever you need to get a good sense of your soil. Pull a few more cores, remove the thatch and grass and send it to the lab to find out even more.

How To Get Grass To Grow In Shade

Growing grass in shade can present many problems. Like all plants, grass needs sunlight but shade cast by your home or trees leave some areas without much sunlight. There are also problems associated with lawns in shade that you'll need to keep an eye out for.

Some common problems with shade lawns are poor density, compacted soil, excess moisture and moss.
In this post I'll cover some issues and tips on how to grow grass in a shady spot.

1" Of Water Per Week and Other Lawn Watering Myths

How much should you water your lawn? That's a very common question and one that gets asked frequently and there are some common answers. They may have started out as rules-of-thumb but have been repeated so frequently as to at least verge on the edge of being classified as myths.

So lets go over why you shouldn't go by these suggestions and then cover how you should really water your lawn. Bear with me, it's pretty easy, the only hard part is understanding why you can't let someone else tell you how to water your lawn. There's even a tool to tell you how long you need to water your lawn. The hardest part is probably reading through this, I know I can be a bit long winded. Hopefully it's worth it.

How To Take Great Lawn Photos

So you've worked hard getting your lawn to look great and you want to show it off on the various organic lawn care forums that have helped you get to where you are.

You walk outside, digital camera in hand and ear to ear grin as you snap pictures of your luscious green lawn. As you're downloading the photos from your camera so you can upload them for posting you start scratching your head. What happened to your nice green lawn? Where's the dark green color? Someone must have secretly swapped out your memory card and replaced the photos you took with a lawn that looks yellow and old. That's clearly not your lawn!

Don't worry, your lawn is fine, you're pictures are not but with a few simple tips and one relatively inexpensive piece of equipment you can have your lawn as good as it does in pictures as it does in real life. Having a camera where you can control the exposure settings and the ability to add a filter is recommended but you can still get better results just by taking photos at the right time.

The photo at the top of this post shows the same section of lawn taken on the same day. The right side looks more like what the lawn actually looks like the left side is what the camera thought the lawn looked like.

Get Organic Corn Meal Delivered Every Month

Corn meal is used by organic gardeners to help fight and prevent lawn diseases caused by fungus. Applying at a rate of 10 lbs per 1,000 square feet every month helps prevent disease, 20lbs to fight an active disease. It is also a very mild fertilizer. Around 1.7-0.7-0.4 NPK. It's not just good for your lawn but also other plants (roses) and vegetables (tomatoes) that are susceptible to disease.

I just found something that I think is worth sharing. It's going to be a little more expensive than buying it from your supermarket, which is already more expensive than buying at a feed store or wholesale food distributor but you get the benefit of having it delivered to your home every month for free! I've never been to a feed store and don't have any locally.

No excuse to forget it. It comes, you apply! And it's 100% organic so you're not applying genetecally engineered products to your organic lawn.

It's normally about $35 for 24 lbs with free shipping, but if you order a subscription it's only around $30. There is no obigaion. You can discontinue your subscription when you don't need it. You just have to remember to start your subscription in early spring when you start getting your lawn ready to wake up.
Click here to order your free delivery subscription of Organic Corn Meal now.

UPDATE: Also recently found Great River Organic Milling, Organic Specialty Corn Meal, 25-Pound Package which is a better deal Even more so if you subscribe to receive it monthly.

Edging An Overgrown Lawn

photo by SriMesh

I'm going to be honest. For a long time I didn't even know edging a lawn was a thing! There's a lot of things you don't learn growing up in an apartment.

Edging your lawn isn't that difficult but if its been many months or years since your lawn has been edged it's going to be a little harder than usual.

If you haven't edged your lawn where it meets a hard surface like a driveway, it's going to be very tough to get a clean edge. I ran into that problem recently and this is how I tackled it.

Grass Growing On Sidewalk

The grass, roots and soil over time will creep onto the hard surface. If it's been months or years (or never?) you might find yourself with an edge that looks like the (crude) illustration below.

What you want is an edge that looks like this:

In a situation like this, a string trimmer won't cut it, you'll need an edger as I discussed in my trimmer vs edger post. But that's just going to make things easier, it's not going to make it easy.

String Trimmer vs Edger

You know the old adage, use the right tool for the right job. Well that definitely applies here. Just like it's possible to drive a nail into wood with a pipe wrench, a hammer does a faster, better job.

Many people buy a string trimmer and try to use it as an edger in the hope of creating a nice clean edge where their lawn meets a sidewalk, driveway or path. Many trimmer heads can even be repositioned to make it easier to edge or may even be called a trimmer/edger but in reality, a string trimmer is good at maintaining an edge but a dedicated edger will do a better job creating the edge.

Where To Buy Cornmeal in Bulk

Regular old yellow cornmeal is used by many organic gardeners both as a fertilizer and to control and treat diseases in lawns and plants. You can spread it over your lawn and water it in or apply it to the soil around plants such as roses or tomatoes to prevent and treat disease.

When I first tried it I was impressed by the results. I've been using it almost every year in the spring to fertilize the lawn and help prevent disease. When other lawns in my neighborhood turn various shades of brown, red and orange mine typically stays green.

There have been some university studies that show its effects. The application rate is 10-20 lbs per 1,000 square feet every three to four weeks to help prevent disease and 20 lbs per 1,000 square feet if there is an active lawn disease. You should start seeing results within 3 weeks.

Organic Cornmeal Delivery

If you're having a hard time finding a local supplier of bulk cornmeal or you don't want to go out of your way Amazon has a great deal on 25lb bags of Great River Organic Corn Meal with free shipping.

Cornmeal treats lawn disease because it becomes a host for trichoderma. Trichoderma is a fungus prevalent in many soils and many strains act as a fungicide.

As a fertilizer it is very mild having an NPK rating of around 1.7-0.7-0.4. At 10 and 20 lbs per 1,000 square feet that turns out to be 0.17 and 0.34 lbs of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet which is very light for a fertilizer but you can apply it frequently without burning your lawn. For many, the disease control is the main reason to use cornmeal, the fertilization is a bonus.

Finding enough cornmeal for your lawn can be a challenge but here are some ideas of where you can look to find large bags of cornmeal if you don't live near a feed store.

Mowing Tips For A Healthy Lawn

Following these tips will help keep your grass looking it's best. This isn't about creating an even surface or making perfect stripes in your lawn. It's about keep your lawn thick, green and free of weeds and disease.

Every little thing you do to your lawn can have a tremendous impact on the appearance of your lawn. Mowing is no exception and sometimes poor mowing can really hurt your curb appeal.

The following tips are easy to implement and will improve the look and health of your lawn.

Is Compost Enough For My Lawn?

Some organic lawn care proponents and even some organic lawn service companies feel that all your lawn needs is compost and compost tea. Are they right?

I don't think anyone that is into organic gardening or organic lawn care dismiss the benefits of compost but is only using compost enough to get the best lawn you can? Well I'm not an expert on compost who has performed decades of research on compost but Abigail A. Maynard, PhD. of the Connecticut Agriculture Experiment Station is.

The Best Composter Is The Cheapest!

Yup, that's right! Those fancy compost tumblers that can cost hundreds of dollars didn't perform as well as a simple and affordable $40 composter according to a test of some popular home composters I found on youtube. (Video below). It got the hottest out of all the composters tested, likely due to it's better air circulation.

It's basic, it's easy to use (I got one shortly after writing this) and really cheap!

Geobin Composter

The Geobin Composting System is a simple to use composter from Presto Products. It's not exactly what was shown in the video but made from the same company. Seems like an updated design.

The Geobin 3' tall and you can adjust the diameter up to 4' but it's recommended to keep the diameter between 3-3.5'. It consists of a mesh plastic perimeter and stakes to hold it in place.

The Geobin is very similar to the homemade chicken wire and garden stake composters except it's a smaller mesh. This still provides good air circulation but restricts a lot of the sunlight from hitting the material which can lead to weed germination. This can be a problem with chicken wire compost bins too. Since it's made of durable plastic, you don't have to worry about anything rusting.

Removing Ground Ivy From Lawns

Ground Ivy, also known as creeping charlie can be a terrible nuisance in a lawn that is difficult to kill.

There are two ways to kill ground ivy organically. Use a solution of borax on it, or manually remove it.

Borax can be found in the laundry aisle of many supermarkets under the brand name 20 Mule Team Borax. Borax is an natural occurring compound but it does not break down over time so repeated use can cause problems. Borax can also harm other plants including your grass, as well as your pets.

Why You NEED a Reel Mower

There are a lot of good reasons to use reel mowers but there's always one time I really wish I had a reel mower. When overseeding. You likely have some areas in your lawn that need to be overseeded, sometimes every year. The grass could get thin or bare for various reasons such as being in a very shady area.

Normal gas, and even electric, rotary mowers have a fast spinning blade that creates a lot of turbulence under the deck. This can dislodge the seeds and give you poor seed to soil contact. Once the grass starts to grow, the impact of the blades can rip the new grass out of the lawn since the roots aren't long and strong enough at that point.

Does Liquid Aeration Work?

Your lawn can benefit from core aeration, especially if you have compacted soil. Renting or hiring someone to aerate your lawn can be expensive and purchasing a manual lawn aerator can be time consuming. There must be a better way?

There are products that claim to be liquid aerators that you spray on your lawn with a hose end sprayer. These include LazyMan Liquid Lawn Aerator, Aerify Plus and Nitron A-35.

But how well does liquid aeration work?

Easy and Affordable Organic Lawn Fertilizing Program

When it comes to organic lawn fertilizers there are many options and different people will find different products useful. I came up with two organic lawn fertilizing schedules that should be effective in many parts of the northeast. I'll be comparing it to a synthetic 4-step lawn program that would cost $24 per 1,000 sq ft per year.

You can use this program to help guide you toward developing your own organic lawn care program.

Trouble getting grass seeds to germinate?

Did you plant a new lawn or overseed an existing lawn and your grass seed failed to germinate properly?
That's very common. Grass needs three things to germinate. Good soil to seed contact, proper temperature and water. Lots of water!

Good soil contact is achieved by raking the soil to loosen it, then using the back of the rack to press the seeds in and/or top dressing with compost. Soil temperature should be above 70 degrees farenheight. This is one of the reasons fall is the best time to seed in this area. The soil will retain a lot of the heat from the summer while the opposite is true in the spring.

An Inconvenient Lawn

In 1984 Dr. June Irwin, a dermatologist in Hudson, Quebec, Canada who also owns an 80 acre farm where she raises chickens, sheep and geese, concluded there was a connection between the symptoms she was seeing in her patients and the herbicides and pesticides used in lawns. Her patients even had traces of lawn care chemicals in their blood. That's when she began her letter writting campaign to alert the newspapers, town meetings and other government agencies of her concerns over the severe health risks and unknown side effects on the environment.

Her devotion to the cause resulted in a 1991 bylaw banning the residential use of pesticides for cosmetic purposes in Hudon. Two major chemical lawn care companies, Chemlawn and Spray-Tech, filed suit against Hudson arguing they did not have the authority to institute such a ban. Both the Quebec Supreme Court and the Quebec Court of Appeals upheld the bylaw which banned pesticides.

The entire province of Quebec also enacted a ban and Home Depot doesn't stock those products. A quick look at homedepot.ca and I couldn't turn up any.

That story will now be part of a documentary by Paul Tukey of SafeLawns.org and filmaker Brett Plymale titled "Hudson: A Chemical Reaction" which is scheduled to hit the independant film festival circuit this year.

Encap Fast Acting Lime Review

Lime is an important soil conditioner for your lawn. Some people treat lime like a silver bullet or a fertilizer and apply it every year. It's not either of those and usually doesn't need to be applied every year.

If your soil has a low pH (acidic) lime can seem like a miracle cure. The reason is the pH of your soil can affect so many different things and correcting your soil pH can have dramatic benefits.

Benefits of Adding Lime To Your Lawn

Cool season grasses do better in a neutral pH so if you're soil is acidic you're grass won't grow as thick. Thin grass looks bad and doesn't help to crowd out weeds. Many weeds don't mind acidic soil so they'll have no problem growing where your grass won't.

Lime also provides calcium to the soil. If you're soil lacks calcium, it could lead to more dandelions since dandelions have an easier time reaching down into the soil to extract calcium. A proper ratio of calcium to magnesium is also important in clay soils, which cover most of the northeast region. According to SafeLawns.org, the proper ratio should be 7 parts calcium to 1 part magnesium. Too much magnesium can also lead to soil compaction in clay soils.

How to identify lawn problems

One of the problems with lawn care is you don't get to see the problem until it's too late. It would help if you could detect if there was a problem with your lawn sooner so you could do something about it.
To accomplish this you need to take off your rose colored glasses and have a good hard look at your lawn... with purple colored glasses!

I saw a web page talking about stress detection glasses that are used to see stress in plants up to 10 days sooner. They were very expensive. If you're a turf manager at a golf course or other sports field, the expense might be justifiable, but if you're just an average guy (Joe the Gardner?) spending close to $100 or more to see where your lawn needs watering or is otherwise stressed seems rather excessive. So I looked for other options.

Realtime Landscape Architect

I was hoping to find some free sprinkler design software to help plan out a sprinkler system I want to install but never seem to get around to. There doesn't seem to be anything out there. You would think at least one of the major lawn irrigation manufacturers out there would invest in putting one out and giving it away to help sell their products. Instead they have software that makes it easy for you to send them the details of your property so someone else can lay it out.


Along the way, I ran across Realtime Landscaping Architect. It's not free, but it is reasonably priced and they have a trial version available.

The samples caught my attention. The 2D plans looked hand drawn which I found to be very appealing. The screen shot you see on the right illustrates the sketched look in an example from the product info page.

Unfortunately, when I was playing around with the trial version at least, it doesn't draw the plan that way by default. Instead you get the regular rendered view that you see in most other consumer design programs.

Finally! A Sub $100 Rain Barrel That Looks Decent

There are some good looking rain barrels out there, but they can be pretty expensive. I can understand the decorative ones that look like terra cotta pots or whisky barrels costing around $200 or more, but even the simple looking industrial looking ones are usually over $100.

When I was looking for information on hose reels I noticed a new product on Suncast's website. Suncast now has a 50 gallon rain barrel.

I have to say, I really like how it looks. It's not as pretty as the fancy rain barrels that look like pottery and have a planter on top, but it doesn't look like industrial garbage either.

The best part is it comes with everything you need and is less than $100 including shipping. That sounds pretty good to me.

Even if you got a 55 gal garbage can from the hardware store, the bulk fitting, spigot, and other assorted components and put it together yourself, you wouldn't save much and it wouldn't look as nice.
The Suncast Rain Barrel looks like a winner in my eyes.

How To Quiet An Impact Sprinkler

Chik - Chik -Chik - Chik - Chik - Chick -- Ch Ch Ch Ch Ch Ch Ch Ch Ch Ch

You know that familiar sound of an impact sprinkler. I find it pleasant, but in the early morning hours when your automatic sprinkler timer comes on, there may be situations where the noise is not appropriate. I have a little trick to help make an impact sprinkler be a little less noisy.

Fixing a Leaking Hose Reel

So wouldn't you know it, after reading all those reviews when I was trying to decide what type of hose reel I should get and seeing so many reports about leaks, as soon as I installed my hose reel, it leaked badly!

This post is going to be my initial review of the Suncast Side Tracker Wall Mount Hose Reel (model STA125B) as well as some information on how to fix leaks. The hose reel is great after everything was sorted out.

There are two types of leaks people seem to get. Leaks from where the spool connects to the base and leaks from the back of the leader hose fitting. I was anticipating the former at some point in the future. I was surprised that I encountered the later right away. But it was an easy fix so I'm not too concerned right now.

Choosing A Hose Reel

I never really gave hose reels much thought. For years, I've just used a hose hanger, similar to the one pictured right, that came with the house.

It's worked fine but it's not very convenient. At the end of fall I have to coil up the hose and then haul it back out in the spring.

It always winds up looking messy, no matter how much I try and keep it wrapped nicely. The loops get bigger and bigger as the season goes on and I get tired of messing with it. Especially when I need to use the entire length.

So last year I decided to start looking into what different types of hose reels are available and what I think would suit me best. I was a bit dismayed as there were a lot of negative reviews, especially for the cheaper, more common plastic hose reels.

I had some loose criteria when I first started looking. The hose reel should be wall mountable, the spool should be easy to detach for winter storage and it should hold at least 100' of 5/8" hose. Most of the time I would be pulling the hose out perpendicular to the wall, but I will also need to pull it out parallel to the wall to get around the front of the house, so it needed to accommodate both directions.

Now is a good time to overseed

Over the next week we'll be getting a lot of rain in most parts of the northeast and if you haven't already overseeded your lawn, now is a good time to do so.

All the rain we're supposed to be getting will help keep the seed moist without the need to water every day, which should help keep your watering times down.

Keep an eye out and make sure the weather doesn't change, which it usually does, and water your lawn as necessary. It is important to keep the seeds and soil moist to get the highest germination rate.

It's best if you have a programmable sprinkler system. You don't need to rip up your yard to install one, there are many hose based options you can use to keep your lawn watered. For some ideas, review my post on automatic sprinkler systems for small yards.

If you haven't already done so, there is still some time to aerate your lawn before you overseed. Aeration helps improve the germination rate.

Turf Hound Aerator Review

I picked up a Hound Dog Products Turf Hound Aerator last year and now that I've used it a few times I wanted to give my review and some pointers.

The Turf Hound is a manual lawn aerator that is great for small yards or for getting into areas where a gas-powered aerator can't. It is a very affordable and environmentally friendly way to aerate your lawn. It is better than other manual aerators because it pulls plugs out of the lawn instead of poking holes. Just like a gas-powered core aerator would.

Gas-powered aerators are expensive. A few hundred for a tow behind unit if you already have a lawn tractor, or a few thousand for a dedicated unit. You can also hire someone to do it, but that usually runs $75-$100 and up depending on the size of your lawn and your location.

If you've read some marketing about liquid lawn aerator products, read my comments on whether liquid aeration works or not before spending any money.