The Weedo Device product reviews

Gardening is something that my husband and I love. We do seem to run out of time to keep all the weeds at bay in the garden and they sometimes get the better of us. The chance to review the Weedo was an opportunity I jumped at. The idea of not having to get down on my hands and knees sounded great.

I attached the Weedo to my cordless drill with ease and was away. I found that it tilled up the ground beautifully. I found that if the ground was already softish, it was much easier and efficient to use the Weedo. It was an easy up and down motion to mulch up weeds in the vege garden. Docks were mashed to pieces in seconds. I tested a patch of the garden just about two weeks ago now and there are only a couple of weeds popping up in the patch that I did. I have been watering the garden regularly lately and I would usually expect more weeds to have appeared in that timeframe.

I use planks of wood in my garden to walk on and the soil tends to get very compacted in the areas where the planks lie. I used the Weedo in these places to aerate and loosen the soil. It was very quick and effective. It was harder to use the Weedo in areas of severely compacted soil (e.g. the lawn). I see that there are different sized blades available - I would imagine that the biggest blade would be the best option in such a situation.

I was able to get rather close to my plants and if I was paying better attention, I think that I wouldn't have damaged any of my plants. It so happened that I wasn't paying 100% attention as I had my children with me and I managed to chop up a strawberry plant and a pea plant! I should have had a bit more practice in an open area before getting into the closeup areas. Lesson learned!

I found that the drill yanked on my arm a bit when I was first using it (and perhaps not paying full attention).

Our drill is nearly new and has good power. The batteries are also new. I think that the success of the Weedo would be dictated by the power of your drill and how charged up the batteries are. I found that when one of my batteries started to lose charge, it lost a lot of the effectiveness.

I can see that this unit will be particularly effective over winter as I tend to forget about my garden during that time and the weeds go crazy. The novelty and ease of use of the Weedo mean that I may be more inclined to pop out to the garden and quickly till it up a bit.

I wonder how using the Weedo might affect the worm life in our vege garden. At one stage when I was using it, a worm appeared on top of the soil. It didn't make any effort to move away. I know what would have happened to it if I had moved just a little closer with the blades of the Weedo.

I showed the Weedo to a few people prior to actually using it myself and the general consensus was that it was an unnecessary purchase. I could see possibilities for myself (I have a bad back) and also for my father who has arthritis. I think that it is a good product and it is very well made. It is certainly not going to fall apart in a hurry! I am happy to have this as part of my garden tool shed and I look forward to seeing what sort of a difference it will make in our garden over the course of the year.

There is a good video clip on YouTube that shows how the Weedo works. I found it very useful to watch prior to using the device.

When I saw the description for this device, I was super excited about having something to make weeding the garden a bit easier and a bit more fun. I even hoped that being able to use a power tool to do the weeding might entice hubby to help too! Hubby thought it might be a bit gimmicky, but when we were offered one to try, that's what we set out to find out...

We have a fairly powerful cordless drill, so figured we'd be OK and we attached the Weedo to the drill with ease. I had my vege garden in mind to sort out, and as per the before-picture, it really needed a weed! I had hauled out the real overgrown stuff a couple of weeks prior, but I really hadn't felt like tackling the small stuff... and the weeds I did attempt to remove, had grown back almost straight away anyway.

I received a Weedo with a long shaft which didn't work so well for my raised gardens, but I understand you can get shorter shafts (or just chop it down). I didn't want to do this as I did find the long shaft the perfect length for our ground level gardens - you can weed while fully standing up which was great for the back!

The instructions say to hold the Weedo over the garden and move it up and down, moving from spot to spot and removing all the weeds. As I had two garden beds to do, I ended up sort of whizzing it around a bit without always going straight up and down and this seemed to work just as well. Later when I was spot weeding some other gardens though, the up and down motion worked well - I could just zap the odd weed as I found it. I did find I had to stop and remove the weeds from the shaft and blades a few times as they get quite twisted around it, but I expected that with my garden the way it was! And it definitely improved on the efficiency each time I removed the weeds.

I managed to weed right up close to my small plants just like the instructions say, but I did find myself sometimes tending to automatically grab the spinning shaft of the Weedo, just to help stabilise my hands - oops. I doesn't hurt but as it spins in your hands, you realise fairly quickly you should only hold the drill part. This did get a bit heavy at times, but of course I was doing a large area and I was working in a raised garden, so I accept that I should probably have had the shorter shaft on anyway.

The after picture shows what my garden looked like afterwards, and it still looks like that a week later - I love that the weeds haven't grown back at all. Usually with my half-hearted weeding, the weeds would be back by now, but the Weedo really does zap them right down at the roots. This is a huge endorsement for the quality of weeding with the Weedo. The other huge positive is that everyone in the family wanted a turn, even our 6 year old - if it can get everyone keen to maintain the garden, that's great in itself!

I did find that the Weedo didn't work as well when the battery started to run down a little. We had a spare battery on charge and ended up using both of them and got to the point with both batteries where we couldn't weed effectively any more. I admit I wasn't expecting this with the newish drill we have, and so expect our old drill probably wouldn't have coped with the job at all. But with a good drill, this is a great way to make weeding fun and efficient and I can think of a few people for whom the Weedo would be a great fun and novel present. And I think I proved to my husband that the Weedo is more than just a gimmick.

Anything, and I mean ANYTHING that can help reduce the workload in the garden, is something of great interest to me. After seeing this device in action at a recent show, I knew I had to try it out for myself. With our household putting down a small in-ground garden and a more significantly sized potted garden, anything that could help remove the weeds, till and aerate the soil, and destroy that bane of horticulturists everywhere - oxalis - would be a welcome addtion to the toolbox.

Using this device is simplicity itself; stick it in your drill - cordless with a lithium battery is great for light to medium work, but heavy duty work would require a high-torque corded drill - and shove it in the soil where you want to work, while pulling the trigger on the drill. With the pointed nut on the end helping to provide steady guidance and stability during operation, the blades will cheerfully churn their way down, loosening the soil, grabbing and smashing weeds, and should it come across any oxalis corms, it will turn them into slurry, never to regrow. Even my kids had some fun making oxalis soup when I came across a rather large cluster at one point.

One of the best things about this device is that, unlike larger and bulkier machines you could use, it is very precise. I was able to get within 10cm of plants without disturbing their roots - you just have to keep in mind that as you approach plants, you need to keep the device in the upper layers of soil. The roots of most plants tend to grow in a cone, widening as they go deeper. You really don't want to pulp up the roots of your passionfruit vines or lemon trees, after all. However, in the "root crop" section of the garden, where we are growing carrots, radishes and beetroot, I was easily able to weed almost right up to the plants without trouble, since they don't spread out roots very far at all.

I had been forewarned that the device does tend to "grab up" any long fibres in the soil, and sure enough every time I pulled it out, there was a cluster of thread-like fibres tangled around the end. A few seconds to loosen the knot and it was a simple matter to remove them. On one occasion I had to give it a few swipes with a craft knife to break the knots, but that was once out of 20-odd times - hardly significant. Just keep that in mind, and check the end of the Weedo regularly to keep it working at top performance.

Available in a number of shaft lengths and blade diameters, this is a very versatile tool. Be sure to buy a set - a smaller blade for close-up weeding work, and a larger blade for working the wider open areas of the garden and aeration of the soil between crops. The larger blades are also good for mixing the soil when you are revitalising it with compost etc.

Overall, if you are a gardener and want to get a better job done with far less effort, you should be looking at one of these. Better yet, look at 2 or 3 of them for best results in all situations. At current pricing, they would also make a great gift for loved ones who are into gardening too!

PLEASE NOTE: Using a corded drill is not recommended by the manufacturer, and all due powertool precautions should be taken when using this device.