When most people think about spring cleaning, they often think about the inside of the house. After all, the nice spring weather allows you to open the windows and use stronger cleaners, leave the back door open so that you can head to the outdoor trash can, and put rugs over the clothesline to give them a good beating.
Spring cleaning isn’t just restricted to the indoors, of course. Even if the area of the country you’re in doesn’t have a lot of snow, there’s usually a downtime in the winter when the yard just doesn't get a lot of attention. When winter is over and spring gets people interested in landscaping again, it’s time to take a look in your garage or tool shed and find out which tools you need to get that outdoor spring cleaning done (and which ones are too old and need replacing).
Garden Hoses
If you’re one of the few people who are really on top of it, you removed your garden hose nozzle, let it dry, and put it in away for the winter. Then you carefully drained your garden hose, moving the water from end to end multiple times until it was as dry as possible. That went into the garage as well. You might have even turned off the water to the outside spigot.
That’s the best-case scenario. As predictable as winter is at showing up every year, many people simply forget to put their hose away. Freezing temperatures come and crack the water that was left in the hose nozzle. The water in the hose expands and freezes, bursting the hose. With any luck, the spigot attached to the house didn’t suffer any damage, but if you left the hose attached to the house it might have.
Of course, if you bought the cheapest hose and nozzle at a big-box store, the freezing weather might have done you a favor! If you’ve run into broken watering equipment, it’s time to upgrade to something that will do the job better and last a lot longer. Grab an amazing Flexogen watering hose here in lengths of 50, 75, or 100 feet, and wrap them up with stylish garden hose reels. Small hose sprayers are right here, and we also carry long-pole watering wands to make watering tough spots even easier.
Weeders
Have you ever wondered if we simply choose to grow the wrong stuff as ground cover? While the grass might go dead every winter, you can look out there and see some green weeds nearly every day of the year!
But until your HOA or neighbors accept weeds as an acceptable way to keep your yard green, you’re probably interested in getting those weeds out of there. Sure, you could use a kneeler and bend over to take care of each and everyone, but it’s a much easier task to simply grab one of these stand-up weeders that can take some weeds out by the roots. We carry both Fiskars and Yard Butler weeders that can make your weeding a lot more efficient and a lot easier on the knees.
Saws
Most trees don’t mind being trimmed in early spring before they start putting out leaves. After all, you don’t want them to put all that energy into branches that you’re just going to lop off anyway. (There are always exceptions, so make sure to research your particular tree before you start cutting.)
It’s likely you have a saw, and maybe even a pole saw, in order to help you take those dormant branches off. But is it sharp enough? Dull saws can cause cause cuts that aren’t smooth; these tears, especially if they strip the bark, can create gaps and holes that allow fungus and insects access to the inner parts of the tree. Keeping that old, dull saw isn’t worth it if it means losing a tree to tree-killing invaders.
It’s nearly impossible to sharpen a consumer saw, so if yours isn’t doing what you need it to do or is damaging your trees, be sure to grab a new one. We have the best from Bahco, Barnel, Corona, Felco and Silky that will keep their edge longer and give you a clean cut. (After any cut you should use some tree wound dressing in order to seal the cut and protect the tree from pests.)
Rakes
No matter how well you cleaned up last fall, there are always going to be leaves to handle during spring. The stragglers blow off (or, if you have oak trees, the new leaves push off the old ones). Leaves blow in from neighbors yards, or the wind bring in trash that collects behind your bushes.
We have a rake that will take care of all of those situations. Take our 19-inch wide steel head rake for instance, that can cover a wide swath of our yard on every stroke. There’s also our 8-inch rake that’s perfect for getting in behind shrubs and digging out all of those leaves that will get moldy if you leave them through the spring rains. After you’ve collected all of these, grab them with some leaf scoops and put them in the composter.
Get Ready For Spring!
There are dozens of garden hand tools that Frostproof carries that you’ll be needing before long — shovels, lawn aerators, garden forks, cultivators, and more — but for now we think the ones we mentioned above are the ones you really need to have at the ready. Click those links and get ready for spring!