The Internet has lost its mind about using your drill in your garden. In short, you put in a very long drill bit, drilled a hole and put a light bulb in it. But it gets better: they make drills specifically for this purpose – they’re called augers – and they’re even better than regular drills, and you can do more with them.
How to grow bulbs with an electric drill
Bulbs need to be planted 4-6 inches deep, very close together. A spade is not ideal because it has too large a footprint, but an auger will actually make many holes of the right depth that are very close together. Augers come in a variety of lengths and widths, and a three-inch auger can accommodate all the bulbs you must plant. You simply attach the auger to the drill, aim it at the ground and start drilling. (You can use a corded auger, but a cordless auger is a huge advantage here.) The auger is designed to go through the ground easier than an auger bit, loosening the adjacent soil, which benefits the root system of your bulbs or plants. You end up with a very deep cylindrical hole into which you can place the bulb.
When to break up the soil with an auger
Now is a good time to refresh your soil, as it still retains all the moisture from the spring rains. When summer comes, the weather will dry out and the job becomes more difficult. Augers are great for doing some topsoil renewal, especially around plants where a shovel is much more of a threat.
Photos from the article titled “All your garden needs is an auger”
Photo: Amanda Blum
The real winners here are pots and hanging baskets, which need to be renewed every year, not beds, which don’t disturb the soil. These little containers need new compost, new fertilizer, and tend to get very compacted in the summer, so you need to break them all up, which is much easier with an auger than dumping them all out.
The best hack, though, is the long auger, which goes underneath the sidewalk or sidewalk and digs trenches for pipes or power lines. If you’ve ever had to do this, you know that it’s very expensive to have it done professionally and difficult to do yourself. You can use a hose faucet designed for this purpose, but if it encounters anything under the sidewalk, the water will be useless. However, the auger goes through like butter and clears a path in a matter of minutes.
Also, if you’re erecting posts for lights, fences or pergolas, you can use an auger instead of a post digger. It will make short work of digging many narrow, deep holes. This means less cement is needed to fill the holes, which is important if you have to transport cement from your car to the job site.
