Product Review: Luster Leaf Rapitest Rain Gauge
09/19/2022
By Mike Thayer
One of my favorite leisure time activities if I'm not fishing, is gardening/landscaping. Every morning, weather permitting, you'll find me outside in the yard, taking a 'garden tour' of sorts, checking veggies, pulling a few weeds, admiring flowers and watering - and watering a lot with the Wichita area in an extreme drought situation. I've pretty much let the lawn go dormant, but in addition to the veggies and flowers, I'm watering trees and bushes. This heat and long dry spell has not been good for my magnolia tree out front.
So, with this drought going on, what do I do? I buy a rain gauge! Wishful thinking? A Fruedian rain dance perhaps? Nah, it's the power of positive thinking. At some point, it's going to rain, and then some.
I haven't bought a rain gauge up to this point because I don't have an ideal place to put one. In the past I've always had some kind of structure out in the open but in close and easy view from a window, a fence post or a deck rail that I could secure a rain gauge too. It was nice to just simply look out the window and read the rain gauge. The exterior layout of this house isn't that convenient. With a chain link fence out back rather than wood and no deck, the type of rain gauge I've been accustomed to purchasing isn't practical. So without any type of wood structure within eye shot of the house, I had to go for a different type of rain gauge.
Enter the Luster Leaf Rapitest Rain Gauge.
This one comes with a holder you can stick in the ground or a container. I've got a pretty good sized planting area adjacent to my back patio that is within eyeshot of the house, so that's where it went. The gauge itself is easy to read and is scaled in inches and millimeters. The clear polystyrene gauge measures rainfall up to five inches. The stake is multi-piece, so I could shorten it to adjust the height if I wanted to place it in a container rather than the ground. Both the gauge and the stake are made of plastic, so I won't have to worry about rust or glass breakage. There is a downside to going with inexpensive plastics however. The UV light from the sun will eventually take it's toll, yellowing the gauge making it tougher to read and those rays will make the stake bitter over time, resulting in breakage. I can prolong the life quite a bit by simply and easily storing the rain gauge in the garage for the winter.
I purchased this rain gauge for $9.99 at Johnson's Garden Center, using my loyalty cash. Reasonably priced and very easy to assemble, with proper care it should last quite a few years. The ability to easily remove the stake from the ground or a container to relocate it or store it for the winter is a big plus. You can't to that with many of those plastic 'nail it to the wood post' type of rain gauges. I'm giving the Luster Leaf Rapitest Rain Gauge 5 out of 5 Bachelor on the Cheap stars.
$pend Wisely My Friends...
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