Gardeners disclose their all-time favorite landscaping gizmos

We asked three locals (a professional gardener, a recreational green thumb and a Back Mountain Bloomer) to talk about the handiest gardening implement they’ve ever … handled.

In this year of victory and recession gardens, experts say many will grow their own produce instead of buying it elsewhere and others might simply want to beautify their yards with flowers. Those who can’t take a vacation can at least feel as if they’re somewhere else.

Whatever the case, they’ll need the right tools on hand to get the job done.

Bill Jones doesn’t want to think about how long it would take him to break up the soil in his half-acre garden in the Back Mountain.

Had he not purchased a tiller or cultivator some 15 years ago, his favorite pastime might take a bit longer.

“Something like this is a lifetime investment,” he said, of the Yard Machines large tiller he owns. (He and his wife also keep a small Honda tiller on hand).

The garden-center expert at Home Depot in Wilkes-Barre said tillers are a big seller right now and they get his vote for best gardening tool.

“I don’t even want to imagine if I had to dig it up by hand,” said Jones, who grows everything from corn and squash to watermelons and pumpkins and uses his tiller about three times a week.

The lawn-mower-like machine breaks up the soil to plant seeds or actual plants, and they can be used again and again in between crops to stop weeds from growing.

It’s important to maintain the garden throughout the season, he said.

“I start right from seeds because I enjoy watching them come up through the soil,” he said.

The pro loves to garden so much he even gives crops away at a small stand in front of his house where he accepts small donations.

“To cover the costs of the seeds,” he said.

What else is popular nowadays?

Believe or not, the standard lawnmower is topping Jones’ customers’ shopping lists at Home Depot.

“The biggest thing this year is a lot of people who had landscaping contractors are doing their own gardening,” he said. “People are putting more time into their homes.”

Everything is “cottagey” in Lynn Kelly’s Trucksville garden.

Kelly is a member of the Back Mountain Bloomers and has studied at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square.

“I start every day in the garden,” she said. “I walk around and see what happened overnight.”

She grows foxgloves, ferns, blue hydrangeas, sweet alyssum, some vegetables and lots more.

With plants growing in the front and back of her cottage, the trip from her back yard to the front garden is up a hill, so she needs a little help.

That’s where her trusted gardening dollie is put to good use.

After picking it up at a yard sale for $10, she started using it to transport big pots from the back to the front.

“I’m out of breath carrying it with that. Can you imagine me trying to carry it up?” she said on a recent morning in her garden as she transported pots of flowers up the hill to her front yard.

But the dollie is tied with the soil knife for the honor of Kelly’s most beloved tool.

The knife, with its stainless-steel blade, makes her life much easier, she said, because not only does it kill weeds, it loosens soil, divides plants and digs.

“Two of the girls at Perennial Point use it,” she said, explaining she bought it a few years ago. It costs roughly $24 to $30.

The knife comes in handy this time of year, she said, especially as she prepares her garden for the Back Mountain Bloomers “Tour of Back Mountain Gardens” set for June 27, a day on which seven different gardens will be highlighted, including her own.

Day lilies line the side yard at Bob Schalm’s Luzerne home, where Schalm is constantly planting vegetables, flowers and trees.

After living on an acre of land in Dallas for many years and growing up with avid gardeners for parents, Schalm, fittingly, adopted gardening as a favorite pastime.

And he couldn’t do it without his two favorite tools: the hose and planting shovel.

“I use the big one, too, but mostly that guy,” he said, pointing to the small shovel, which can be purchased at any hardware store and sits atop his backyard potting table, where he pots begonias and impatiens.

In fact, he’s not even able to guess how many he’s owned in his lifetime.

“I know there are two more in the shed worn out,” he said.

As for the hose, it is vital to the success of his vegetable garden every season, he said.

“Without the hose, you wouldn’t be able to have all this,” said the gardener, who waters his plants “every day it doesn’t rain.”

He plants onions, radishes, lettuce, carrots, spinach and bell peppers next to a white shed he bought at T Town Sheds in Tunkhannock.

“We’ll have a salad out of that garden every night in the summer,” he said.

In another part of the yard, he grows a variety of tomatoes that his companion, Karen, uses to make marinara sauce, stewed tomatoes and occasionally tomato juice.

“We’ll have homemade sauce all winter,” he said, noting the pair freeze those they don’t use.

Also in the yard are Rose of Sharon bushes, or as some call them, tiny trees, which Schalm renamed “Rose of Karen,” in honor of the special lady in his life.

http://www.timesleader.com/features/Gardeners_disclose_their_all-time_favorite_landscaping_gizmos_05-16-2009.html