Skip Shovels: There's A Better Way To Get Smooth & Sharp Landscaping Edges

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Achieving a great-looking lawn can be as simple as keeping your grass healthy, nicely mowed, and free of leaves, but if you want it to look fantastic, clean edges are a must. Accenting the edges of your lawn highlights all the maintenance work you do, while also improving airflow and water distribution along those edges. A spade shovel with a sharp blade is a cheap and effective edging tool that's probably already in your shed. However, if precision and ease are important to you, the CKLT Edger Lawn Tool, available on Amazon for $22.99, is an even better one that allows you to do the job faster and more accurately. 

A dedicated manual edging tool with a semicircular blade is going to do a much better job at maintaining a crisp border than a spade, and the work will go a lot quicker, too. The CKLT tool is a unique variation that has a serrated blade instead of a single-edge one, which allows it to cut easily through grass and soil. The blade is made of reinforced steel, and if the promo pictures on Amazon are accurate, it's hard enough to break through brick.

You use this tool by pushing down on the footplate while you hold the blade in place with the rubber handles. Once the blade sinks all the way, you extract it, move a full blade length along the edge, and repeat. Once you develop a rhythm, the job goes fast. 

If you're using a tool like the CKLT edger to get a clean demarcation line between your lawn and a walkway or garden, you'll get the best results if you mow your lawn first. Next, check for obstructions in your path, such as branches or other debris, and move them. Finally, lay a string or hose along the path to give yourself a reference so you don't veer off-course, and start digging. Keep the blade vertical as you push it into the ground, then tilt it slightly to deposit the dirt on one side of the small trench you're making.

Instead of two footplates on either side of the handle, as you find on many conventional manual edgers, the CKLT edger features a large central footplate. Even if you're wearing boots, there's still plenty of room to step on the footplate and push the blade into the ground. Because the footplate is centered over the blade, it allows for better control. You can regulate pressure to the right or left simply by shifting your foot, which makes it easier to cut through rocky or inconsistent soil. 

Though there are many types of both manual and electric lawn edgers to consider before buying one, the CKLT manual edger beats out options in both categories. It's quieter than electric edgers and doesn't produce any emissions, and the CKLT works as well as or better than a shovel for digging small holes for planting and shallow trenches for irrigation pipes or low-voltage wires.