Pine cones falling in your yard are bothersome. They could sink into the ground beneath the grass when wet, especially since they range in size from tiny to enormous. You might wonder what the best way to pick up these pine cones is. After much research, we have finally found the answer!
The best way or equipment to pick up pine cones in your yard is a stab-a-nut pine cones picker. The main reason, and what makes it popular, is that this device can accumulate varying sizes of pine cones in your yard.
Aside from using a tool to pick up pine cones, you can do it only with your hands. Please keep reading to know the other ways to do it and determine the tools you can use to make picking up the cone pines easier. Doing so might also answer some of your additional questions. Let's delve into the details!
When Do Pinecones Usually Start Falling?
There are dozens of different varieties of pine trees. The exact date that pine cones mature and fall from trees varies from species to species. Female pine cones need two to three years to reach maturity, open their scales, release their seeds, and finally drop into your yard.
Expect pine cones to fall in your yard during the autumn season, which is from the months of September to December. And you can usually find them in parks, yards, gardens, and woods, usually under conifer trees.
What Is The Best Way To Pick Up Pine Cones In The Yard?
It is a must to determine the best way to pick up these annoying pine cones, especially since they fall into your yard and create a mess.
A pine cone picker makes gathering pine cones much simpler and quicker than using a rake, making it the best way to do the picking-up task. If you are unfamiliar with this one, know that the pine cone picker is a nut bag that gathers the pine cones when pushed or pulled.
Moreover, after you gather the pine cones and needles, you should put them in an airtight container to keep them dry and cool. Immediately picking the pine cones and needles and preventing them from getting wet would be best to prevent them from spreading acids that can harm your other precious plants and grass.
What Are The Methods You Can Do To Pick Up Pine Coness?
Falling pine cones mean you will need to be extra careful with the grass and other plants in your yard.
You should immediately eliminate all the fallen pine cones in the yard because pine needles might have fallen off with them. Keep in mind that the pine needles' acidity can affect the breathing of the surrounding plants. Additionally, it also contributes to the harm you and your children might obtain when you have stepped on them.
The first thing you can think of to get rid of those pine cones immediately is to sweep them off or use your hands. However, there are tools or ways to quickly and easily do this particular task, and they are the following:
Use A Stab-A-Nut Pine Cones Picker
The most effective and best instrument for gathering pine cones is a stab-a-nut pick-up device. This pine cone harvester is prevalent and advisable to efficiently collect and retrieve pine cones thanks to its pump-style thrust reverser. Good thing that this stab-a-nut tool obtains all sizes of pine cones, while most other pine cone collector tools or equipment focus on the larger ones.
Pine Cone Wizard Is Also Advisable To Use
Just like the stab-a-nut pine cones picker, the pine cone wizard is also a highly efficient pine cone collector. The instrument's bendable arms can also gather pines of varying sizes. If you're employing this equipment on stones or loose grass, the pine cones will not be challenging to collect.
In addition, collecting pine cones and discarding them anywhere you like is also OK. These factors explain why the pine cone wizard is gaining in popularity.
Click here to check out this pine cone wizard on Amazon.
Use A Lawn Mower To Remove The Pine Cones
Aside from using your hands to remove pine cones, you can also think about utilizing a lawnmower to make things much more manageable.
The lawn mower's revolving bristle makes it an efficient tool for tidying up the outdoor space from pine cones. It can also clean up even the pine needles in your yard. This approach is better than sweeping. However, it can also be time-consuming.
Utilize Any Type Of Specialized Raking
This specific rake is helpful because of the strategic positioning and design of the tin. Expect that you can gather pine cones and needles using the same equipment. An example of this tool that can quickly pick up pine cones is the cyclone nut rake.
No matter how big or small the pine cones in your yards are, they are no match for the teeth and effectiveness of a specialized rake.
Bag-A-Nut Roller Can Also Be Effective
This equipment is ideal for eliminating all the pine cones on concrete surfaces. However, a bag-a-nut roller won't be practical for pine cones on delicate grasses.
When you use this equipment on grass surfaces, expect only to accumulate 15% of pine cones. On the other hand, when it comes to a concrete surface, you can collect over 40% pine cones.
Click here to check out this bag-a-nut roller on Amazon.
Can You Use Lawn Sweepers To Pick Up Pine Cones?
You can use a lawn sweeper to pick up pine cones. Additionally, this equipment can also help in picking up twigs, acorns, and other debris. However, note that a lawn sweeper won't be able to remove bigger items. These include tree branches and twigs.
Can You Prevent Pine Cones From Falling?
Unfortunately, you can't do anything to stop pine cones from falling off the tree. You may keep your grass looking neat and clean without impairing the cone pokes by picking up the pine cones with the use of a gadget designed for this purpose.
What Are The Things You Can Do With Pine Cones?
Although fallen pine cones in your yard seem annoying, there are still some good reasons to collect them. And they are the following:
You Can Create Crafts Using Pine Cones
This one might be one of the most popular ideas you can do with pine cones. Pine cones can be helpful in creating fun characters for kids. Instead of buying expensive toy characters, you can cost-effectively produce one just by using any or all of the following with the pine cones:
- felt or fabrics
- twigs or branches
- colored paper
- paints
- yarn
Use Pine Cones To Decorate Your Home
However creative you may or may not be, pine cones are a versatile decorating material.
Just by putting them in a jar or vase and combining them with other seasonal items, you may create a warm and welcoming atmosphere in your house. You can decorate with tiny bulbs, ribbons, and ornaments during the holiday season.
Using Pine Cones As An Addition To Organic Mulching
Pine cones, either in their natural state or after splitting up, make excellent organic mulch material because of their lengthy decomposition duration. You can lay them near plants and garden beds to assist soils in holding more water and preventing weed growth, and they also look nice. Additionally, they serve as a great natural snail deterrent and spider habitation.
You Can Collect Pine Cones To Support Wildlife
Pine cones typically fall in the fall, right when wildlife populations are at their lowest and could need some extra nutrition to make it through the winter. Pine cones can be the most valuable materials, especially since you don't need to spend money to create the following projects:
- Pine cone palaces for ladybugs
- Making a few pine cone bird feeders
- Pine cone additions to bug hotels
Pine Cones Are Excellent Snacks
It is a little-known fact that you can consume pine nuts or seeds. While unprocessed consumption is an option, roasting or toasting brings out their full flavor.
Preserve the pine cones you have collected. It would be best to keep them heated and dry to coax the seeds inside to germinate.
Furthermore, when doing this, you must remember the same principle that applies to all the ideas we have for harvesting and feeding from the natural world: only take what you need and leave plenty for the rest of the ecosystem to enjoy.
What We Have Learned
Removing pine cones is a must. Although they are good to use as mulch, remember that they might fall with pine needles, which are harmful to the surrounding plants and grass because of their acidity. Since we have already discussed the different ways to pick up pine cones quickly and easily, it will be up to you now to choose which of those you prefer and find the most effective.
You have finally finished reading! We hope you find this post helpful. If you still want answers to questions, please feel free to reach out in the comments, and we'll get back to you! For further reading, you can check these posts out!
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