Get your yard ready for winter with these fall landscape maintenance tools! I'll show you the garden power tools you need to get the job done quickly.
Is your yard and garden ready for winter yet? I've been putting off my landscape maintenance chores for weeks! But when the mercury suddenly dipped down around freezing this weekend, I knew it was time to get to work. There are leaves to clean up, branches to prune and garden beds to mulch before winter truly sets in. I'll show you the right tools to get these jobs done quickly and easily!
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I've teamed up with Ryobi Outdoor Products to tackle my fall landscape maintenance tasks. They provided me with the garden power tools shown, but all opinions are my own.
Earlier this fall, I did a little rearranging in the garden. I divided the ferns, moved around a few plants and put down some mulch. Then I started pruning back a few of the lower branches on our giant black walnut tree.
But what about those branches that are waaaaay up there? There were a few that were growing too close to a nearby birch tree, causing it to bend. (By the way, isn't our backyard shed adorable? Too bad we just use it for storage!)
The magnolia tree near the house was touching the roof, creating a squirrel super-highway! We could hear their little feet scurrying across the shingles during the day, and hoped that they weren't nesting in our eaves at night. (And yes, our house has two different sheens of paint. That's another project for another day...)
Luckily, Ryobi is here to help! Their Expand-it system allows you to use just one handle and battery for a whole array of attachments. The pole saw attachment extends up to 12 feet, so I can reach those high branches without having to climb a ladder.
Be sure to wear a hard hat, gloves and safety glasses when trimming overhead branches! Safety first!
While it looks like a chainsaw on a pole, it certainly doesn't sound like one! Because it's battery-powered, it's super quiet and therefore way less scary to use.
Pretty soon, I had accumulated a pretty big pile of branches!
I broke the branches down further with bypass loppers so they fit in the yard waste bin.
Now, to clean up the mess! Switching from the pole saw to the leaf blower is easy-peasy with the Ryobi Expand-it system. In seconds, I was blowing away all the debris that was left behind from trimming the trees.
Our walnut tree lost all its leaves in a windy rain storm, forming a thick, wet carpet on the grass. It would take hours of back-breaking work to clean them all up with a rake.
But those wet leaves were no match for the Ryobi leaf blower attachment! Its powerful fan pushes away everything in its path easily. Even the pesky walnut shells that squirrels leave behind went flying into the pile!
Of course, where there's a leaf pile, there's a little boy playing in it!
All it takes is a few minutes with the rake to get all those leaves into the compost bin. On the next not-rainy day, I'll tackle the garden beds as well. Then all my landscape maintenance tasks will be done until spring!
Want to see these tools in action? Check out my video to see how easy they are to use!
Be sure to check out the Ryobi Outdoor website for all the tools in their Expand-it lineup. Get more yard maintenance ideas over on their Landscapes page too!
The same 40V battery works on the Ryobi self-propelled electric lawn mower too! I can get all of my landscaping done with two batteries in half the time!
Now that you have the right tools, how are you going to store them? I created this handy garden tool storage rack that keeps all your attachments and accessories in one place on the wall!
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claire Armstrong says
I need the leaf blower, you can't see the grass at the moment in my garden for all the leaves.
BJZ says
Seems like a handy tool for garden cleaning process. Thanks for sharing this amazing post.... The blower seems to be an effective one for cleaning the falls.
Leviticus Bennett says
When you said that the tree was bending because of the weight of the one next to it I thought about my mother's trees. Her house has a great big cottonwood and a small silver maple. The cottonwood's branches tend to fall off in a storm. Sometimes they fall on the maple tree. I'm going to suggest that she gets a landscaping company to prune the branches to save the other tree and increase the lighting in her yard.