PRO TIPS: Edge Garden Beds Like a PRO - Perfect New Bed Edges - Redefine Bed Edges Perfect Landscape

Welcome back guys, it's the Tightwad. In this video I'm going to take you through the process of either defining a new edge of a bed or redefining one that has been neglected over time. The first step is to kill any grass or weeds that are on the interior of the bed and here I'm using a non-selective herbicide meaning it kills all grass and weeds. I'm now ready to create the border for this bed and I've already come in with my non-selective weed killer and killed the grass all the way around so you can kind of see the brown line and I have this shovel with a flat edge on it and one way you can do this is to go around the whole thing sticking in like this and you're working your way around the bed. So the first step is going on the outside here you want to go two or three inches down this is a little bit hard here ideally you would do this after a rain so you're going to go all the way around the bed from the outside and then you're going to spin around to the inside and come at an angle go back in you're going to be pulling out this from the edge. This is a rather labor-intensive way to edge a bed and this is a very large bed so I wouldn't recommend this unless you have a lot of time on your hands to get this done. I'm going to cover two other ways that are a lot faster and more efficient ways to get this done as well. What you're going to end up with is a defined edge here and then a v going down to it from this side and if you can get below the roots so this area where it creeps and crawls it'll prevent the grass from growing into your bed in the future then you can fill up that groove with mulch which we'll be doing today. That takes us right into the second option which involves some pretty common used lawn maintenance tools and here I'm using a stick edger which is a rotating blade on the end of this device and then I come back with a weed eater at an angle to get that v so the stick edger goes straight down like the shovel from the outside and then the weed eater or a string trimmer works as the cuts from the inside of the bed and then I can come back with a blower and blow all of the dirt and grass out of that v leaving us another nice defined edge. After I did some of my work yesterday my father-in-law told me that my wife's uncle had this Stihl brand bed edge redefiner and it's got this really nice big blade on it so and it's got also a really nice guard to prevent it from throwing stuff on you so I'm going to try this on this edge and see how it does. I think this would be the ideal solution so let me check it out. Since I had already finished that one bed with the edger and the string trimmer method I did want to move to some other beds to show you how well this edge redefiner worked before anything was done at all. Alright so I went back and blew out most of the loose dirt here and that's important to do so that the it doesn't just pack back down and allow the grass to grow through it. As you can see I've got a nice inch or two height here. I could go a little bit lower to completely prevent the roots from growing through but you can see right here the runners for that Bermuda are chopped so most of them are growing above the level that I cut at. I am going to make a full video for this edge definer while I have it so I'll link that in the top right corner right here if you want to know more about it. We'll talk about the motor size needed and how it works and where you can buy them so check that out in the top right corner and I'm going to go ahead and get this project finished up. The next step in the project is to spread a pre-emergent. I'm using a product called Preen which I'll link in the pinned comment and in the description for this video and a pre-emergent keeps any weed seeds that end up in the bed from germinating so new weeds don't develop. I do recommend that you wait to do this until after you have already done all of the other work and right before you put down your mulch to get the best protection. Once you have that edge of your bed perfectly defined and all of the weeds removed from the inside it's time to spread your mulch. Now I was doing this project for my neighbor and he likes this red pine mulch. I personally prefer pine straw in my beds but either one of them work. Here's one of my beds with nice fresh pine straw it's got a nice rolled edge there. I've got a video showing how to do that you can see it in the top right hand corner of the screen right now and you can see that nice crisp edge of the Bermuda grass coming in and transitioning into that higher rolled edge of pine straw. So as you can see both options look really great you just have to pick your preference and go ahead and get it spread and make your project look really nice. Here's the edge after a few weeks. You can see it's still nice and clean. I did come back in and edge it. I usually edge my beds every two to three times that I cut my grass. You can see it is much easier to maintain once you have that defined edge already created. If you found this video helpful hit that thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. If I ever post a follow-up video I'll make sure it's linked on the screen right now. You can also see some other landscaping videos I've done linked on the screen. If you click them they'll open right up on your device. I have t-shirts available via the links in the description and the pinned comment and as always I hope you guys have a great day.