Wednesday was a public holiday here in Australia, so my husband and I spent some time in the garden in the afternoon. We had over 300 bulbs to get into the ground, in preparation for Spring. The weather has begun to cool down, although we still haven’t had a lot of rain here. Been the driest Summer/Autumn period in our region for quite sometime. A few weeks ago we had to have 10,000 litres brought in by truck, as our tank was almost empty – it’s usually kept full from overflow from the house tanks.
Anyway, my husband bought this awesome tool some months ago. It’s called the Power Planter. We love it. He showed me how to use it the other day and I planted 14 Salvia bushes in quite a short time. Not only a time saver, it saves your back too! Anyway, today’s project was to plant the bulbs and we were so thrilled to get them done in just over an hour! Just over an hour! Had we been doing it the old way (digging over the soil, digging a hole for each bulb, etc) it would have taken much longer and our backs would have felt it too.
Anyway, as I said, we love our power planter. Just makes the job easy. Graham made the holes, I dropped the bulbs in, then watered them in and covered them over. Easy peasy. Hopefully, next Spring, this whole stretch at the top of our paddock garden will be filled with colour. We planted: Liliums, Dutch Crocus, Hoop Petticoat, Garland Lilies, Daffodils, Tulips, Freesia, Ranunculi, Grape Hyacinth, Spring Stars, Anemone, Ixia and Dutch Iris. Also a Ferraria Undulata that I saw at the garden show last month in Melbourne. We still plan to put some ground cover in this section for the rest of the year. Thinking on which ones in particular at the moment. Hopefully we’ll complete that soon.
Gosh, I’ve never heard of a power planter before. I wonder how well it would work in hard clay though? It must have been nice to get those bulbs in so quickly!
To add, I just looked up a power planter on YouTube and OMG, I WANT!!!!
Works in hard soil and soft soil. I love it. Planted a number of salvias on the weekend, while my husband was busy doing something else. And it worked as well for me as it does him, even in the harder soil.
Do you feel you need much strength to use it? I ask because I have a chronic illness and have little physical strength, so cannot normally dig holes etc. So do you need to push hard to get it to work, or will the tool do most of the work for you?
No, not a lot of physical effort, the tool does most of the work. You just have to hold on to it and press a button. If you click on the link in my post there should be a video or two you can watch.
All the bending will be worth it when they are all out in flower in Spring.
The power planter would cut down the work by more than half.
Wish they were around 15 years ago when we were planting our garden.
Certainly saves your back. And cuts down the amount of time to do things too.
Thanks Kathie. It definitely looks useful.