Just as I was researching how best to maintain my replacement-type lawns (clover and creeping perennials), the tool guys at Black&Decker offered me a spanking new 24-Volt Cordless String Trimmer/Edger to review and boy howdy, did I say yes.

My Review

In trim mode I needed it to shorten the groundcovers along the stone pathway and it accomplished that easily, even using the Normal power setting (there’s also a Boost setting).    Then in edger mode I wanted to trim around all the stepping stones, which were completely hidden by plants.  This was also easy but actually fun because it uncovered my long-missing fieldstones.

Before and after shots above, and below is a little video demonstrating both trim and edge modes.

Next, I tried the trimmer out on my neighbor’s Liriope spicata (right),  which in its vigor was obscuring her stepping stones, and again it did the job easily.  This is really good news because us Lawn Reformers can promote these plants as super-low-care alternatives to lawns, with no mowing required.  Just a couple of trims each season can, I think, keep lawn-like but turfgrass-free spaces neat and navigable.

B&D also asked me to comment on comfort and weight and I can say I was totally comfortable using the thing.  I did put on hard clogs for the job – Safety First! – but then proceeded to do the job with my legs bare – Safety Not So Much!  Like too many customers, I didn’t read all the safety precautions, but I just bet that covering your legs is one of them.

Now having used a corded electric lawnmower and hated that damn cord with surprising intensity, I’ve gotta say the cord-free nature of this tool is fabulous.  What freedom!  I used the trimmer for about 30 minutes on a single charge and I assume it’ll last longer than that, but don’t know yet exactly how long.

How Green is It?
That’s the question everyone’s asking about everything – fair nuf – and it’s not a slamdunk in this case because some amount of electricity IS required, though not much for just a path.  The point is, it’s far better than any gas-powered cutting device because it produces no emissions.

And keeping in mind the many gardeners who need power tools, we don’t point fingers at their use, responsibly done.   Count me in as a Boomer desperately seeking ways to garden standing up, not kneeling and bending over.   Ouch.

So what ARE the human-powered tool alternatives? One option is the old-fashioned sycthe, but the motion is a wide side-to-side affair, which is good at whacking down meadows but not for fine trimming in the garden.   For edging only, there are nonpower tools for that and I hope to try one out soon.

How to Win One
If you’d like one of these handy tools for your own lawn – alternative or regular – just leave a comment to win one.  Tell us why you need a cordless trimmer/edger, what you’d do with it, how crappy your yard looks without it – you get the idea.  Entries accepted til 6 p.m. EDT Sunday June 27.

UPDATE:  We have a winner (chosen randomly) and it’s Shelley Bates, who entered on behalf of the Hillside Victory Community Garden in Hillside, NJ.  Congrats to all the community gardeners who’ll be using their new Spin Bin!

The nice folks at Clean Air Gardening have offered a brand new $170 Spin Bin Composter to one lucky reader-commenter, and honestly, I wish I could enter.   It’s a new product that was designed to solve some known composter problems, especially for city dwellers.  Of course that includes rodents, the number one question urbanites have about composting, and this bin keeps them out.  It also has 20 ventilation slots for adequate aeration, and four thermometer ports for checking the temp without having to open up the bin.  It also seems easy to move.

To Win

• Just leave a comment telling us why you want it, how you’ll use it – anything about your experiences with composting, past or future – and the winner will be chosen randomly from all commenters.
• The contest closes Friday, June 4 at 6 p.m. EDT.
• U.S., lower 48 only, please, due to shipping cost.
• I’ll be asking the winner to please send me an email about how the composter is performing.  Readers want to know!

For years I used cheap reversible gloves, which were incredibly easy to use because any two gloves would do the trick.   But after my favorite garden center stopped carrying them I couldn’t find them anywhere.

The gloves I settled on as a substitute are also cheap and I buy them by the dozen, but they’re not reversible and I usually grab two rights or two lefts.   I posted once asking for ways to solve this (petty by any standard) problem, and also suggested to glove-makers that they make all left gloves one color and all right gloves another for us hurried gardeners too busy or distracted by new cultivars (or something) to check the leftness or rightness of each glove.

I know that in the 12-Step world this would be called a higher-order problem, but still, it IS fun to find the solution.  Especially when it’s so damn simple, like the two white glove buckets you see here.  I drop right gloves in the bucket on the right, and so on, and I can’t tell you how pleased I was with myself for thinking this up.

Last year I became a veg-grower in earnest with my new Gardeners Supply “self-watering” containers, but they still needed huge quantities of water and the lugging of water from the kitchen sink became a prime gardening task.  (Still, totally worth it because those vegetables were so much fun to grow, and the produce was pretty awesome even to a nonfoodie like myself.)  I asked for ideas and was even sent a very curious “water vest”, which I’ll be testing for readers as soon as they send me the attachments.

But it won’t be the pots on the deck that get watered with the water vest because Eureka – I’ve found a much better solution and it’s so obvious I can almost hear a collective “Duh!” as I’m typing this.  It’s a 50-foot old garden hose and adjustable nozzle that arrive on the deck from the spigot below via a handy hole drilled through the wood.  It can even be left ON all the time with no leakage – good lord, how easy is that?

Read about what I learned as a newbie container veg-gardener here on GardenRant.

Next up in our on-going exploration of garden furniture – what's long-lasting and affordable – I have to show you my teak bench.  Sure it's more expensive -  I paid $320 for it about 20 years ago, fully assembled and retail – but then I did absolutely nothing to it and it still looks perfect to this day!  Up close you'd see that it's smooth, with no splinters – truly amazing.  It’ll certainly outlast me.

Ah, but is teak sustainably harvested?  Planet Green sums it up nicely for us – " Two out of the three species of teak are endangered, and all have been subjected to unsustainable forestry practices for decades", so mostly, no.  If you have your heart set on it there IS a certification for sustainable harvesting of teak and one company that's attained it is East Teak.

I recently reported the death of my Adirondack chairs and actually received condolence for my "tragic" loss!  That was Stuart in Australia, saying he'd learned about them from me and considers them iconic of my garden.  Well, I do, too, but not to worry – they can be replaced!  In fact, I found a few zillion of them at AdirondackChairs.com, a site that seems to handle e-commerce for a bunch of furniture makers and even provides customer reviews á la Amazon, so I'm there.

Cheap and Lovely

Now the cheapest chairs are made of pine, like my rotted and falling apart ones, also cedar or fir.  In defense of this option, my pine chairs would have lasted longer if I'd taken the time to repair the inevitable gouges and cracks that come with softwoods.  These cheapies start at only  $69, and some are even painted for you already.  Above you see the cedar "Coral Coast" painted cherry red and only $100.  Or there's Natural Cedar for $73.  Or the lovely green made of cypress for only $80.  I love the look of all of them, but then I've never seen an Adirondack I didn't like.

"Eco-Friendly" and Not So Cheap

Now let's explore the options actually labeled "eco-friendly" by this e-commerce dealer, starting with their highest rated.  It's the Hyre's Country, made of "environmentally friendly wood from sustainable forests" and costing a much heftier $243.  Turns out the wood is "Red Meranti Mahogany" which really needs those quotes because it's not a real mahogany but a tropical hardwood called Shorea (shown on the left).  The other "sustainably harvested" tropical hardwood available is Brazilian cherry, but if it's from, you know, Brazil, there are other "eco" tests it just won't pass, and with any tropical hardwood I'd have to research a little deeper than the claims on one e-commerce website, wouldn't I?  And I don't want to.  So, moving on.

The largest offering in the eco line are chairs made of recycled plastic – just like the fencing recommended by Ed Begley - which is also called polyethylene resin for you particular types.  They're all maintenance-free and made in the U.S.  The best-sellers in this bunch are made by Great American Woodies in Ohio and they just happen to come in my favorite garden accent color of all – TEAL!  (Also white, black and sand.)  A lifetime guarantee would set me back $330 each but I'm thinking the $220 chairs with the five-year guarantee would be just fine. 

And the Winner Is

The Ohio-made plastic chair in teal!  Sure, $220 is more than twice what the softwood costs but dang, that no-maintenance feature is worth it.  Oh, and recycled, too~!  Really, what's not to love?  Merry Christmas, Self!