Happy Earth Day!  45 years ago Senator Gaylord Nelson decided to raise consciousness about the environment after witnessing a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California.  His efforts started the modern environmental movement and led to a worldwide celebration and network dedicated to raising consciousness about a wide array of problems and issues facing our planet.

As a gardener, you know that April is the perfect time to celebrate the earth.  Everything is blooming and growing.  Unfortunately everything doesn’t just mean flowers and fruits.  No, in April, everything is growing – including weeds and bugs!  Because of this I thought I would take this opportunity to do something a little different with the weekly tip.  Since we will all be spending a whole lot of time and effort battling pests over the next couple of months I thought I would tell you about my two favorite pest control tools.  Before I start I would like to say that I get nothing for promoting these products.  After much trial and error I have found these two tools to be invaluable and I just want to share them with you.

CobraHead

My most used and most loved garden tool is the CobraHead Weeder & Cultivator.  This curved piece of steel with a little football shaped head goes with me every time I go into the garden.  After trying many, many different tools throughout the years, I have found this inexpensive tool works best for me.

As the name says, this little tool does it all.  I use it to weed and I use it to plant.  Its sleek shape gives me enough leverage to pry up crab grass or scrape out Bermuda runners.  It also allows me to quickly dig holes for transplants or dig a furrow for planting seeds in my black clay soil.  I get all of this functionality out of a tool that only costs $25.  What a deal!

MITEYFINE Mister

While the CobraHead helps keep my weeds at bay, the MITEYFINE Mister helps me wash my bug problems away.  The MITEYFINE Mister is an ingeniously simple tool that does a great job keeping aphids, spider mites and even some caterpillars at bay.

Co-blogger Patty Leander introduced me to the MITEYFINE.  Her brother is an engineer and he is the inventor of this organic pest control tool.  The MITEYFINE is a wand that attaches to your hose.  The tip at the end is specifically designed for pest control.  It applies just enough pressure to knock off the bugs without damaging the plant.  Plus, it uses no chemicals, which is really important to me.

The MITEY fine comes in two lengths – 36” and 48”.  The extra ergonomic handle assembly adds 10” to the overall length but makes the wand much easier to handle.  Patty likes the short one and I have the longer one.  This tool has an all metal construction so it will help you kill scale insects for a very long time.

I share my posts on the HomeAcre Hop.  Be sure to stop by the hop.  It has tons of great information from gardeners and homesteaders all over the world!