February is the busiest month in my yard and unfortunately it’s also a crazy month in  my family. For being the shortest month, we have two kiddo birthdays, Mardi Gras, Valentine’s Day and skiing. Phew. But back to maintaining the yard during my maintenance month.

Step by step the biggest priorities in February are cleanup, pruning, spring prep and having the right tools on board to make it all happen.

Having the right tools in place is critical to proper maintenance. The tools need to be in working condition, accessible and easy to use. 

 

Hands down these are my must have tools for yard maintenance:

1.       Leather gloves: I’ve tried so many gloves over the years and the ones I keep coming back to are soft leather gloves, they fit well and hold up to all the wear and tear. Even after being left outside and buried by the dog. Gloves protect your hands from damage, bruising, blistering and dirt in general. However, I still prefer bare hands for small weed pulling.

2.       Wire Rake: a great all around tool. It grabs leaves and debris without damaging plants. It even acts as a small pruner, I use it for groundcovers such as vinca or plumbago to prune out those spent leaves, and shoots. By far I use it the most on my native grasses such as my bluegrama, buffalo grass lawn to clean up the old seed heads and dead grass.

3.       Shovel: There are many different types of shovels each used for specific jobs but all you really need is the spade shovel. It’s useful for digging (of course), picking up piles of debris, and transferring material like mulch to different areas of the yard.

4.       Hand pruner (bypass pruning shears): Use this versatile tool indoors for trimming bouquets and outdoors for removing small branches from trees.

5.       Hula Ho: Hands down the best tool for removing weeds. You gently scrape it along the ground about an inch deep and the weeds, root and all, get removed from the ground.

6.       Collapsible yard bag: A great freestanding catch all bag for leaves, weeds, yard debris. Insert a large black garbage bag to make bagging leaves a synch. It is extremely lightweight and collapses for easy storage.  

7.       Broom: A great tool for indoors and out to simply clean up dirt and debris. (there are many different types but honestly as long as you have one you are set.) Although I must admit, I now use my yard blower to do a lot of jobs my broom used to do.

8.       Weed Wacker: An electric weed wacker expedites the chore of mowing and trimming native grasses.  Tasks that can be achieved with a hand pruner if you have a lot of time to kill.

9.       Yard Blower: I usually don’t like monotools (tools with only one purpose) but when you live in New Mexico where there is a ton of wind and dust and little rain this tool makes prepping for my summer parties easy. It takes me 15 minutes to blow off my patio and porch. (over 1000sf) The end result is amazing. My outdoor furniture, patio and garden beds look tidy and kept. I can’t believe I didn’t get one of these sooner.

Now these are MY favorites but what tools do YOU think I missed? Drop me a comment below and let me know what your go to tools are for yard maintenance. Now that we have all the tools we need we’ll figure out how to use them in the next post when we talk about pruning.  

 

 

p.s. Are we hanging out together on the Social networks?  Here’s a list of ones I use the most.

FACEBOOK:  https://www.facebook.com/BGrowngreenandmore

INSTAGRAM: http://instagram.com/browngreenandmore  and PINTEREST: http://www.pinterest.com/bgandmore/

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