Gardening Gadgets

An odor-free compost pail allows you to store kitchen scraps without stinking up your kitchen or requiring daily trips to the pile. This 1-gallon container has a snap-lock lid to keep critters out and replaceable carbon filters that trap odors (figure B). The filters last for about three months and are easy to replace.

Mixers, which are plastic drums with lids that have baffles inside for mixing, make it easy to add nutrients to your compost or mix the compost with vermiculite or perlite or sand to make your own potting soil.

Ladybeetle houses (figure D) can attract these helpful bugs that eat other bugs. Ladybeetles prefer to overwinter in places like California, New Mexico, and Mexico. But they're likely to return to your back yard in the spring, and to make sure they do, try a little ladybeetle attractant. Put a few drops on tree trunks, structures in your vegetable garden, and your ladybeetle house.

A spray is now available that is said to prevent terra-cotta from cracking due to freezing temperatures.

Moisture meters can help prevent overwatering, one of highest causes of death of houseplants. One is a little signal that you stab into your potting mix. When the watering-can graphic changes color from green to yellow, it's time to water ( figure F). The other moisture meter on the market is an electronic device that senses soil moisture when its probe is stuck in the soil (figure G). Almost instantly, the moisture level is recorded by the probe and displayed on the meter (figure H) on a scale of zero to 10. An accompanying booklet then tells you whether it's time to water that particular plant or not.