What Tools Do I Need for Basic Lawn Care at Home?
Keeping up a nice-looking, green lawn is a tremendous amount of work — hours and hours nearly every weekend — and an entire tool shed’s worth of lawn care equipment. Here are the top lawn care and landscape maintenance tools every homeowner need for DIY lawn care.
Lawn Mower
The single most important lawn care tool you need is a lawnmower (yard required). You will have to mow the lawn once a week with a lawnmower during your lawn’s active growing season.
- What’s the best lawn mower for you and your yard?
- How large of a lawn do you want to cover? Large yards tend to need a ride-on mower, and smaller lawns can be mowed with a walk-behind push mower or reel mower.
- What’s your budget? Lawn mowers exist in a vast price range, from buildings worth less than $100 to thousands of dollars for a ride-on mower.
- What kind of power do you want? You then have a choice between electric and gas. If you opt for electric, you will also need to decide between a corded or battery-powered lawn mower.
Pro Strategy: If you choose to use battery-operated lawn care tools, the batteries frequently work between devices of the same brand — which means fewer charging cords taking up space in your garage.
String Trimmer
Up next is a string trimmer, which you use to cut grass where your mower can’t go, such as around kid’s playsets or flower beds, or along the side of your house or fence.
String trimmers can run on gas, electricity (corded — so you have a radius to work within) and batteries (limited only by battery life).
Edger
Edgers create clear definition between the landscape beds and grass with the ground-crew cutting a deep trench in the soil that separates them, or even between grass and another surface like paved path.
Many people will edge with their trimmer, it gives you a little cleaner line and finished look.
Different types of edgers include:
- Manual: These edgers require patience, meticulousness and a certain amount of elbow grease. Spade edger, roller style edger and hand shears are three of them.
- Motorized: Gas and power cords, as well as batteries drive these edgers. Motorized edgers fall into two main categories: in-and-around models that are attachments fixed to string trimmers and heavy-duty walk-behind machines.
Leaf Blower
If leaves have also begun to clump in your backyard this leaf blower does that job, too. It’s great for tidying up after mowing and edging lawns — you don’t want to track all those loose grass cuttings onto the sidewalk and driveway! It’s also a factor in the fall if you have trees near your grass.
There are three primary types of leaf blowers:
- Backpack Leaf Blowers
- Gas leaf blowers
- Electric blowers
Spreader
A spreader can help you make sure that your fertilizers, herbicides, grass seed, and even de-icing salt are applied consistently. This is one reason that there are so many uses for a spreader, and why it is a vital lawn care tool for homeowners.
There are various styles and sizes of spreaders, so you’ll need to evaluate how much grass seed you have and what size your lawn is in order to figure out which method will work best for you.
- Hand-held spreader
- Push spreaders (broadcast and drop)
- Chest/Shoulder Spreader
- Tow-behind spreader
Bonus: If you’re in a place where you get some snow during the winter, your spreader doubles up as an ice melter as well.
Sprinkler System
To sose your lawn needs water to stay green and healthy. A sprinkler system spares you the trouble of holding a hose in your yard and attempting to water your grass evenly.
Sprinkler systems can be as pedestrian as a sprinkler on the end of a hose, spraying water in one direction or another, to smart sprinklers you can program to water your lawn at specified times and not just when it thinks you might need watering. (Do not water if it has rained recently.)
In-ground irrigation systems are another possibility. You can set them up to water your yard in the early morning, which is the Best Time to Water Your Lawn.
Honorable Mention: Garden Gloves
You should always wear garden gloves when using fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides or ice melt. Your hands will also be protected from blisters, cuts or scrapes as you work in your yard.
Home improvement stores stock garden gloves in a variety of colors, patterns and styles.
When to Call R & S Landscaping
Caring for your lawn requires a lot of work, and a lot of tools.
Those tools require maintenance — such as having your mower blades sharpened at least annually. And you require a storage shed or some room in your garage for your lawn mower, string trimmer, leaf blower and fertilizer spreader.
If you don t like spending all your leisure time & energy in yard-work or lawn care, Call R & S Landscaping to do the work for you 505-271-8419!