Back when I moved into this house because I knew that I do a lot of yard work and gardening, I wanted to have a decent garden hose setup. After some research, I picked up a Flexzilla hose and a hose reel. The Flexzilla hose is great and I don’t have any complaints. The hose reel, on the other hand, is just one of the ones you can get from Lowe’s. Don’t get me wrong, it does exactly what it’s supposed to, it winds a hose up. However, it’s a very simple design that offers some annoyances. I would say that my main problem with this thing is that although it has a system to guide the hose along, it’s manual so you have to physically wind up the hose and actively guide it from side to side to somewhat evenly distribute the hose across the width of the reel which realistically is pretty hard to do. Well, after almost 2 years of this, I’ve finally decided to upgrade to a retractable hose reel and the one that I’ve gone with is from Glahoden.

Installation of this reel is very straightforward. You’re essentially just mounting up 4 bolts to whichever surface you’ve decided on. These bolts are used to hold up the Glahoden mount, which itself holds the hose reel in place via a pin.

Once you get the hose reel installed, it’s just a matter of hooking it up to the spigot and attaching the multi-pattern spray handle that’s included. This is absolutely one of the easiest installs.

Now, I’ve only used this hose a few times over the past few days but I’m going to straight up say that this is one of the best purchases that I’ve made. The level of convenience that this retractable hose reel has added to my life is indescribable.

To use it, all you have to do is pull the reel out. There’s a ratcheting mechanism in the reel and you can hear it click as you pull the hose out. Each click represents a point where you can let go and it won’t retract or a point where it disengages and will retract. This may sound confusing but is completely intuitive and you get a hold of it after a try or two.

I can easily pull the hose out and water the nearby plants. Then when I’m done, I give it a slight tug and can walk the hose back into the reel. The reel itself does have enough power to pull the hose back in without me walking it back but I just prefer to walk it so I can minimize the hose dragging across my concrete and extend the life of this product.

This reel does have an automatic guide that moves the hose from side to side without any assistance. I’m sure it can malfunction and bind up but I haven’t seen any of that yet. This system is working great to wind the garden hose up.

If you couldn’t tell, I absolutely love this Glahoden hose reel. I’m not saying it’s the best that you can get or anything like that, I’m just saying that it’s functional and the price is great compared to some of the other options. The only thing with this is because it’s not from a super well-known brand, I’m curious to see how long it’ll last. I’ll continue to use it, pretty much every day, and will report back if anything happens with it.

If you're considering buying any of the products mentioned, please support my work by using the links below.

Glahoden Retractable Garden Hose Reel: https://amzn.to/49SR46x

Want to support my work?

Consider visiting the shop and buying "Absolutely Nothing"
https://www.HaiHoangTran.com/shop/absolutely-nothing

Become a YouTube member!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLUO-2ltlWfydRZ7pRRnXkw/join

Become a Patron!
https://www.patreon.com/HaiHoangTran

Buy some official merch!
https://www.youtube.com/haitran/store

PayPal
https://www.PayPal.me/HaiHoangTran

Just shop on Amazon via this link!
https://amzn.to/2FgsDnG

What’s going on guys? It’s Hai.

I’ve been wanting to grow some lemongrass for use as a mosquito repellant but when looking to buy some, I couldn’t find any locally and when trying to order, it was like $30 a plant so way too much for what I was wanting to spend. Then after some research, I came across a blog post detailing how you can propagate lemongrass from store-bought stalks. So, in this blog, I want to share with you my attempts at following the instructions from the blog and the results that I got. If you’re interested in reading the blog post for yourself, it’s right HERE.

First things first, we have to find some lemongrass stalks. This is easier to find at an Asian grocery store. I purchased mine from a local H Mart which came in bundles of 3 stalks. In this case, reasonably buy as much as possible. Some of the stalks won’t propagate so you just want to hedge the odds. But also remember that lemongrass grows quite quickly so you’ll be able to propagate more from just one successful plant and there are other forms that propagation for lemongrass that are much easier and almost foolproof once you just get one successful plant going. Personally, I purchased two bundles.

The blog post recommends that when purchasing the stalks, you want to look for stalks with as much of the bottoms intact as possible as the stalks with cut-off bottoms won’t propagate. I looked through a bunch of the bundles at my H Mart but most of the bottoms were pretty heavily trimmed. I kind of wanted to experiment with this and got bottoms with different lengths of cuts. To save you some time, I’m going to say that this doesn’t matter too much because I got successful propagation from 5 of these 6 stalks at the time of this video. So, having more bottom intact is probably better, but you can have success with more of it cut off. Again, I think hedging your odds by buying more stalks is going to be the best approach if you want more plants that propagate.

Next, we’re going to trim some of the stalks back to just a few inches from where they begin to split apart. This gets rid of some of the top dead foliage and I assume helps to allocate more energy for new root development. The blog recommends that you “Try to resist peeling the woody outer layers that form the stem, as new leaves will grow from within these layers.”

Next, we’re going to place the lemongrass stalks in some water. I filled a couple of vases and a mason jar with a few inches of water and just put the stalks in there.

From here, we place the container near a source of light and just wait it out. I started off by putting the plants near a window indoors but my wife got tired of looking at them pretty quickly so outside they went. I experimented by putting them in direct sunlight and in shade. I would say that they prefer to be in the shade because when in direct sunlight, the top of the leaves tends to burn. This didn’t kill the plants but I don’t think it helped them. It probably slowed the growth down but I can’t say for sure. Better to be safe and just let them grow in the shade.

While you wait, you want to change the water a couple of times a week or whenever it starts to look cloudy. I say this but I definitely forgot a few times and just let the plants sit there for like a week and sometimes longer. Again, I still had success.

Now, the blog mentions that within a week, you should see new leaves begin to grow from the top. I did not have any of this but this can definitely be due to me leaving my plants out in direct sunlight and the top of the leaves were just getting burnt.

However, my plants did show signs of new root growth pretty much after the first week. This was the case for 4 of my 6 stalks. Roots started to grow pretty quickly and consistently. However, at the time of this video, which is just a few days over 2 months since I started this process, one stalk has no signs of root growth and one stalk just started to show root growth this week. So just keep in mind that root growth can be completely sporadic. You may be discouraged and want to throw the plants away but it may just need some extra time. For reference, I purchased my stalks on May 14th and today is June 18th.

The blog recommends that you should “Wait until the roots are at least 3 inches long and the stalks have begun to divide (via offshoot stalks) before you plant them.” Honestly, I was a little impatient for this and planted my stalks pretty early. I think two of them were at about two inches and two of them were at less than an inch. What’s worse is I remember snapping one of the smaller roots off which isn’t good at all but hey, it’s working out. I would say that if you’re going to be impatient like me, after planting, you definitely want to keep the soil moist. This is going to help keep the stalks growing.

As for the actual act of planting, I wanted potted plants so I purchased some planters and some organic potting soil. If you’re eating the lemongrass that you’re growing, you’d probably want soil that’s clean in the sense that it doesn’t have a bunch of chemicals that shouldn’t be going in your body in it. I just filled the planter up with soil, placed the root a couple of inches down, and backfilled. After that, give the plat and soil a good soaking and that’s about it. Now, just water the plant, keep the soil moist, and we’re back to waiting to see if propagation is successful.

Again, I’m just over two months into this project and two of my plants are forming new leaves so I would say that this process was a success. I’m still keeping an eye out for the other two planted stalks but those were the ones with less than an inch of root growth when I planted them so things may take a bit longer. Then I have the one stalk that just started to grow roots so that won’t be planted for a while. Lastly, I have one stalk that hasn’t shown any signs of growth so this one may be a dud but I’ll still keep it in the water and we’ll see what happens.

I’m going to keep doing what I’ve already been doing and hopefully, in the future, I’ll come back with a video and show you an easier way to propagate from the mature plants that I’ve grown.

Before we end things, I want to note that I strayed a lot from the original blog referenced in this video. I did a lot of things haphazardly but hey, things worked out for me. I would definitely recommend that you read the blog and understand what the more conventional approach would look like. That approach will probably get you the best approach.

After almost exactly 3 months, the lemongrass stalk that I continued to keep in water finally sprouted new roots. So, if yours is taking a while to sprout roots and if possible, just keep the stalk in water and see what happens!