Dirt Sifter Lowes is perhaps one of the best homemade landscaping tools that I have personally ever come across. They are simply incredible pieces of engineering at their finest. These low-profile, self-retracting vacuum cleaners are so easy to use and yet so efficient at cleaning dirt, clumps of leaves, and other yard debris. Let me tell you about them and how I use them.
I spent about a year (not more than that, for they come in a number of sizes) making my own homemade garden tool set. The Sifter, which is my tool of choice, is part of this homemade set along with a screen, a shovel, and a pallet. The first time I used my Dirt Sifter, I had no idea what to do with it other than using it to clear out all the leaves from my yard. It took me a bit of experimenting, but I eventually found a way to use it to its fullest extent.
The Sifter consists of a horizontal metal screen with a small metal sieve on the front, a pair of scissors on the side, and a handheld metal sifting tool on the back. You can use the sifting screen and the sifter separately, or you can use both of these items together for super-sizing large loads of dirt. The way I prefer to use it is when I am just about done with the large pile of dirt and there is nothing left to be done but to empty the bucket. By using the sifter and the handheld sifting tool, I can easily clear out the clumps of dirt and dispose of them without having to run back and forth to the truck or to my garden plot.
The Lowes dirt sifting tool and the handheld sifting machine that go with it are relatively inexpensive, but I have had better luck with Lowes. The reason I like Lowes so much is because they offer replacement parts if needed. The shovel and the brush on the sifter are very durable and the price is very reasonable. The one draw back that I have seen is that the sifter itself tends to break down a little quickly if you don’t change the water in the bucket very often. For heavy-duty use, this may not be a problem, but for light-duty usage the sifter will probably last for a number of years without requiring any replacement parts.
The Brushless Wood Electric Dirt Sifter works very well in that regard. I have had a few other brands of dirt collection bins and the brushes on those products wear out quickly. But the brushless Wood version I have worked with is very durable and doesn’t seem to degrade as quickly. It also is very easy to assemble – the video instructions to follow are very clear and easy to follow. On the other hand, you do have to make sure to get price quotes from the Lowes website so that you know you are getting the most for your money. The company does have a competitive edge in that regard because they carry the line of Brushless Wood Electric Dirt Sifter and Compost Maker Combination and the Dirt Sifter LCD screen too.
For heavy duty work, or for when you have a lot of garden to clean, you might consider buying the Rotary Soil Screen to remove stones, rocks, and other accumulations of soil. With the Rotary Soil Screen, all you have to do is insert the screen in the sifter to collect the material. It’s very easy to set up and you can dispose of the collected material right onto the compost heap. That’s one less thing you have to do when you want to move the heavy-duty equipment out of the way.
If you are interested in having someone else do all of the heavy-duty cleaning, you might want to watch some of the Dirt Sifter Lowes videos. You’ll get the idea that they are not difficult to operate or complicated to maintain. The rotary sieves and mixers do a great job at mixing and kneading the soil so it will go down evenly and hold together better when it’s mulched. If you need to clear some space in the flower bed, or if you just want to add another layer of organic material to the garden, the soft and the mixers will be able to take care of that too.
A lot of people are using these simple homemade tools. They don’t take up a lot of room, they are easy to operate and maintain, and they are very economical. Some folks are saying that Dirt Sifter Lowes and the other mixers are saving them more money than the commercial tools. The funny thing is, some of the stuff that the homemade rotary trommel handy-stuffs can be used for doesn’t come with these compact discs. So in the end, they are still using the same old tools, but they are doing so in a more environmentally-friendly way.