Kristie Pryor

I built my first raised garden bed out of pine boards from the local lumber yard, and within four years the corners had rotted through. That failure pushed me to research proper wood choices for garden beds, and cedar kept coming up as the gold standard. After three months of testing eight different cedar raised … Read more

I spent the last three months testing robot lawn mowers across my 0.4-acre yard, my neighbor’s hilly 0.75-acre property, and a friend’s open 1-acre lot. I pushed each model through real mowing cycles, timed setup, climbed steep slopes, and ran them over pine cones, garden hoses, and one very curious dog toy. What I found … Read more

If you have been on the fence about swapping your gas mower for a cordless electric lawn mower, is the year to make the switch. Our team spent six months running 8 different battery mowers through thick spring grass, wet summer mornings, and overgrown fall lawns. We measured runtime, checked cut quality on tall fescue … Read more

I started my container garden on a third-floor balcony three years ago, and my first winter killed half my plants before I figured out what I was missing. The answer was a mini greenhouse — a compact, portable growing structure that traps heat, blocks wind, and gives tender seedlings the warmth they need to survive … Read more

I still remember the day a summer storm sent my old terracotta pot crashing onto my patio. After that, I started hunting for something heavier, harder, and built to survive real weather. That search turned into the test behind this guide to the best concrete outdoor planters you can buy right now. Concrete planters bring … Read more

I spent the last three months testing the top 8 DeWalt combo kits on my own home renovation projects, and the results surprised me. The cheapest 2-tool kit handled 80% of the tasks the expensive 7-tool kit did, but the bigger kit saved me roughly 35% versus buying those same tools individually. Finding the best … Read more

If you’ve ever spent a back-breaking afternoon trying to break up compacted soil with a shovel, you already know why finding the best garden tillers matters. A good tiller transforms the worst soil prep into a 20-minute job, and the wrong one will sit in your garage collecting dust after one frustrating use. I’ve spent … Read more

Last spring, I watched my neighbor spend three hours bent over her ground-level garden bed, only to stand up wincing with a sore back. That’s when I decided to find the best elevated planter boxes for people like her who love gardening but hate the strain. I spent the past three months comparing 8 different … Read more

If you have ever watched a banana peel disappear into a wriggling mass of red wigglers and emerge weeks later as rich, dark castings, you already know why worm composting has become one of the smartest small-space solutions for kitchen waste. The average American household throws out roughly 30% of the food it buys, and … Read more

Two years ago, I turned my nose up at composting because my old static bin took six months to break down a single load of kitchen scraps. After upgrading to one of the best compost tumblers, I now harvest finished compost in as little as four weeks, and my tomato plants have never looked better. … Read more