Do solar ultrasonic mole repellers actually work?

Reviews are genuinely mixed. A majority report that mole activity stops within about three weeks of installing several stakes, while a minority see no effect on their local moles. They're cheap enough to try, and effectiveness seems to vary with soil type and how many stakes cover the area.

What is a Hori-Hori knife used for in the garden?

A Hori-Hori is a Japanese garden knife with a half-trowel, half-blade design. It works as a trowel, weeder, root cutter and bulb planter in one tool, cutting through clay and slicing bindweed roots. Gardeners often report it replaces three or four separate tools.

How do self-watering stakes keep plants alive while you're away?

Stakes like Blumat use a terracotta cone connected to a water reservoir (often a wine bottle). The clay releases water at the rate the soil draws it, so the plant takes only what it needs — avoiding both soggy compost and dried-out roots over a week or two away.

← All finds·11 May 2026·6 min read

Weird Garden Gadgets: 5 Oddly Specific Tools That Earn Their Place

An automatic plant waterer is one thing. A solar-powered mole repeller is a whole stage of life.

Gadgets Weird & Wonderful

Every garden eventually accumulates the same drift of slightly bizarre tools — the £15 thing from the back of a magazine, the gadget recommended by a stranger on a Sunday-morning podcast, the device a neighbour swears by but can't quite explain. Most of them are gimmicks; a small minority are genuinely better than digging it out by hand. To find them we dug through several years of r/gardening UK threads, the long-form garden-gift round-ups in the RHS-affiliated magazines, and the four-star-and-up reviews on the kit that keeps showing up on Gardeners' World gift lists. These five came out the other side — bizarrely specific, faintly absurd, and with the kind of review history that suggests they pull their weight.

No. 01

Blumat self-watering carrot stakes

Terracotta carrots that screw onto a filled wine bottle, push into the soil, and feed water at exactly the rate the plant pulls it. The recurring line in the long reviews — and the reason they show up in every "holiday-proofing your houseplants" round-up on Reddit — is that the bottle empties at precisely the speed the plant needs, with no soggy compost and no crispy leaves. Sold in packs of four; works indefinitely.

around £18Find on Amazon

No. 02

Hori-Hori Japanese garden knife

A serrated, half-trowel-half-blade with a wooden handle and a leather sheath. The recurring claim in the r/gardening threads — repeated almost word-for-word in the RHS gift round-ups — is that one Hori-Hori replaces four other tools: trowel, weeder, root cutter, and bulb planter. Cuts through clay, slices through bindweed roots, and stays sharp for years. Looks vaguely menacing on a shed wall, which is part of the appeal.

around £25Find on Amazon

No. 03

Long-handled Fiskars bulb planter

A standing tool with a foot-bar and a coring head that pulls a perfect plug of soil out of the lawn in one motion. The reviewers who plant a hundred crocus bulbs each autumn are unanimous on the same point: it turns an afternoon of crouching into thirty minutes standing up. Built like a garden fork; should outlive everything else in the shed.

around £45Find on Amazon

No. 04

Solar-powered ultrasonic mole stake

A small plastic stake with a solar panel on top that emits an ultrasonic pulse the moles supposedly find unbearable. Sounds entirely like nonsense, until you read the long-form reviews — which keep repeating the same sequence: ground-pushed up everywhere, install four stakes, mounds stop within three weeks, never return. A minority of reviewers report no effect on their local moles, so this one's filed in the "weirdly effective for most" bucket. Cheap enough to try.

around £20Find on Amazon

No. 05

4-in-1 soil moisture, pH and light meter

A pronged probe with a small dial that reads soil moisture, pH, light level, and ambient temperature when stabbed into a pot. The recurring use-case in the houseplant-keeping subreddits is the over-watered fiddle leaf fig: the meter tells you the soil's still soaking three days after you watered it, and the plant abruptly stops dying. Battery-free, no app, no nonsense.

around £12Find on Amazon

A final note

The pattern across every "best garden gadget" thread we read is the same as the pattern across kitchen gadgets: a small handful are genuinely transformative, most are landfill. The five above keep showing up year after year because they each solve a single, specific irritation — watering while away, planting bulbs, hacking through clay, reading the soil — without pretending to do anything else.

Frequently asked questions

Do solar ultrasonic mole repellers actually work?: Reviews are genuinely mixed. A majority report that mole activity stops within about three weeks of installing several stakes, while a minority see no effect on their local moles. They're cheap enough to try, and effectiveness seems to vary with soil type and how many stakes cover the area.
What is a Hori-Hori knife used for in the garden?: A Hori-Hori is a Japanese garden knife with a half-trowel, half-blade design. It works as a trowel, weeder, root cutter and bulb planter in one tool, cutting through clay and slicing bindweed roots. Gardeners often report it replaces three or four separate tools.
How do self-watering stakes keep plants alive while you're away?: Stakes like Blumat use a terracotta cone connected to a water reservoir (often a wine bottle). The clay releases water at the rate the soil draws it, so the plant takes only what it needs — avoiding both soggy compost and dried-out roots over a week or two away.