How About an Acorn Picker Upper Roller?

It's fall yard and garden cleanup time! Yes, you've worked hard all spring and summer to make your gardens and lawn look gorgeous. You filled those planters with beautiful, ever-blooming annuals, edged those gardens with a perfect "v", yanked some shrubs the deer destroyed and planted new ones, fed and dutifully watered all season long. I know — it was a lot of work and you're kind of exhausted. You're ready to retreat indoors by the wood fire. Not so fast, though. You've got things to do. A few weeks ago, I started hearing it. The distinct sound of acorns hitting the garage and chicken house roof. Out in the woods I kept hearing the sound of the nuts dropping through the leaves and plunking on the ground. The frequency of those sounds is telling me this year will be a mast year. A mast year is when oak trees produce an unusually large amount of acorns — their seeds. Mast years happen about every two to five years and typically are followed up by a larger rodent population come spring. A mast year for me means major fall or spring cleanup of the lawns and gardens. When literally thousands of acorns fall onto the lawns here in Dublin, it's like walking across a field of marbles. Add a little rainfall and that trip from the chicken house, with its slight grade headed towards the main house, gets a little treacherous. I've taken a tumble a couple times and cussed up the trunks of the mighty oaks that dot our property. Add a little ice in the freeze/thaw cycles of the winter and all bets are off regarding navigating taking the dogs out for their morning constitutional. I typically let the wind whip most of the leaves into the woods over the winter and just do spring cleanup where necessary. Oaks hang on to their leaves for so long, you'd be raking in the snow if you tried to keep up with them. Acorns are a different matter. On a mast year, they're so thick on the ground, cleanup is required. The other day, a contractor working at the house asked me if I'd seen those acorn removers for sale at Belletete's in Peterborough. My home and garden radar immediately engaged. I drove by the store over the weekend to find them closed, so online I went. My Zozen Acorn Picker Upper Roller arrived two days ago and I was ready for it. Essentially a wire basket on a long handle, it's reminiscent of those popping, pre-school handled roller toys your niece might have had. Online there were several versions of the device at various price points. I'm surprised I'd never heard of it before. Always a sucker for new home and garden gadgets, out I went with my roller after easy assembly. It was a misty, cool autumn afternoon so the acorns were wet. I brought the dogs out with me and started rolling the basket over the carpet of marbles. The basket started filling up quickly but I had to roll back and forth over the same small patch at least five times to pick up all the acorns in probably a square foot space. Compared to my usual raking with a wide plastic leaf rake, I'd say the satisfaction level of a job well done was much higher with the rake. The picker upper acorn device doesn't pick up leaves or sticks — or all the loose, detached acorn caps for that matter. Just the acorns. And, it takes a bit of effort. Nerd fun-wise, though, I did get a little kick out of it. I wonder how quickly the novelty might wear off. There have been obscure yard and garden tools created for centuries and, frankly, I thought the acorn picker-upper people could have gotten much more creative naming this fun device. I read an article, "10 of the Strangest Garden Tool Names You've Probably Never Heard Of" at www.thecelticfarm.com and I think vintage specialty tools had better names than this picker-upper thing. The dibber (or dibble) was a handy pointed stick used to make holes in the soil for seeds or seedlings. The Hori Hori is an ancient Japanese tool also known as a "weeding knife" or "soil knife." How about a pooter? A slightly off-kilter name for a garden tool or what? Well, it's actually not just a garden tool. A pooter is a device used by entomologists to pick up small insects without injuring them. Farmers have used them for ages to identify crop pests. It's essentially a glass ball with two straws. You suck up the bug through one straw with a mesh screen on it (so as to prevent you from inhaling it) and it deposits the insect into the ball or jar for investigation. Now that I've got a bit of a hankering for giving a pooter a try, I'll leave you with this: those acorns aren't going to rake themselves up so put your gloves on and grab a rake and a wheelbarrow. Or, give an acorn picker upper roller a try if you feel like mixing it up a bit.