Don’t forget to harvest seeds from your annuals or other plants.
- Hyacinth bean vine, moonflowers, etc. are really easy to harvest, since they make nice big pods. Just pick the pods and shell them as if they were lima beans.
- Some of the other seeds are a bit harder to find. Most daisy-like flowers, such as coneflowers and black eyed susans, develop seeds in the center of the flower after the fluff has dried.
- If you’ve got a plant you really want to get seeds from, but the seeds haven’t ripened, you can often rubber band a small paper bag over the flower head so that the seeds fall into the bag when they are ripe.
- Once you harvest your seeds, you may need to freeze them for a few weeks to avoid having pests devour them. Mini hollyhocks are especially prone to this problem.
- Label your seed packets with the name and color of your seeds’ parents. Just be aware that you may end up with a different plant color than you expected next year if you have several varieties of a single species in your garden.

Ok, my new toy came and I’ve been playing with it all week. Here’s what I think:
- Don’t expect to power through thicker weeds. Really narrow ones bit the dust in seconds, but ones that had thicker stems took several tries. Saplings didn’t cut at all.
- The power supply is very adequate. I did the whole yard without recharging.
- Easy to handle. There are two places to grip the Grasshog as you cut and if I can handle it without pain, they’ve done something right!
- Tighten everything before you use it. I had to put the guard back on five times and then I realized there were screws that would tighten and hold it more securely.

I didn’t use the edger feature, so I can’t give you any feedback on that.

Overall, this is really a nice tool for the money, but not quite as powerful as I’d like. I kind of expected that, though. Battery powered tools tend to be a little less powerful than other ones. I’d give the Black and Decker Grasshog four and a half sunflowers.