Winterizing Your Lawn and Garden Tools While the Weather is Still Nice Makes Life Easier!

Making preparations for seasonal changes here in Northeast Ohio can be a time consuming task, but with some careful planning and a list or two, I can get it all done before the snow starts up!

Winterizing our lawn and garden tools while the weather is still nice certainly makes my life much easier! Most of the tools I have for lawn and garden are hand held and manual with no engine to worry about.

These still need some attention to get them ready to be stored. Most require a quick rinsing and drying, and the power tools will require a winterizing effort unless you intend to use them throughout the winter season.

Winterizing all of your tools including gasoline engines in preparation for cold weather is a much easier task if you can tackle it while the weather is still nice. So making time now to get the gasoline out of certain equipment that will not be used over winter is smart as I may be able to use it in the chain saw and garden tractor.

Once the garden is done I will need to till in some amendment materials which I have been collecting, and the tools for that will be close to the last to go.

I will have to put away all of the plant stakes, hoops, benches and other garden baskets and pots that are still out there now with plants still thriving in them. These will need the dirt removed and then they will be rinsed and stored in a dry place.

This seasonal switchover calls for some preparation of the snow removal equipment so those items which I use only during winter will need to be found and put out in their most useful locations.

Next thing to do is take out the battery from the garden tractor and put it on the shelf where I keep the battery charger. This way I can keep an eye on the charge level of my batteries.

Getting my firewood ready takes some planning and finding a splitter to borrow and use usually helps me prepare enough useful wood to offset the high cost of heating oil.

The very last thing I try to do is to shut off and drain all of my garden hoses since I tend to need them hooked up so that I can wash things up as I am getting them ready for winter storage!

Invariably I will have forgotten something and at the last minute I will be on the roof or somewhere else so the absolute last thing to stow away is the ladder that I use for watering my hanging vegetable planters.

After that I prepare our Jeep for another season of snowplowing. This job usually takes only about half a day.

Next I move on to winterizing our vehicles!