There is
one brand of gardening scissors that can do a lot more than pruning, a lot
better than any other brand I’ve seen.
It’s Kengyu. Look it up on the
web. I found the manufacturer the other
day. Today, I can only find secondary
suppliers.
They have
red and white plastic-covered loop handles, soft on the outside, and easy to
hold, unlike hand pruners, which have to be actively held. With their short, thin, sharp blades, they
fit into tiny spaces. They were made for
bonsai, but they can cut anything that hand pruners can cut, more easily. Those blades are very sharp at the tip; they
need a tool belt or holster to hold them safely. I like a tool belt, which can also hold
gloves and trash.
Only in
the last couple of years have I found the other great use for them: as a
weeding tool. Faced with the problem of
weeding goat heads and star thistle from dry ground, I found that I could cut
them below their crowns and they would not grow back, being annuals in
flower. This just happens to be the
point at which they violate our nuisance code and must be weeded lest they
become a nuisance.
When an
annual starts to flower, it puts all of its energy into that flower stalk; all
of its energy is in the crown, where all the growth comes from, and above
it. Only scissors with Kengyu’s
super-hard Japanese steel and thin, narrow shape can cut roots under the crown
easily. And they still stay sharp enough
for most pruning jobs after cutting roots in a lot of dirt and gravel.
They
really come into their own when weeding crabgrass, which tends to root deeply
in well-watered ground, rooting additionally along the stem joints as they
spread out from the clump. One can slide
them under the entire crown and cut off those wiry roots, which have no food
and die.
They can
also be used to push down alongside small dandelions to pull more of the root
as one pulls the plant. For bigger
dandelions and dock, however, one will get better results by pushing a shovel or
a weeding knife next to the plant, popping the root loose without pulling out
the soil, and pulling the root out.
They can
also cut weeds out of cracks in pavements.
The sharp tips can reach down under the crown in most cases, and cut it
off the root, where one would otherwise just pull the leaves off.
Yesterday,
I used them for taking moss off my roof.
I was cleaning out the gutters for fall rains and noticed that the moss
was dead and dry, easy to clean out of the gaps between the shingles with the
tips of the scissors, and to brush it off the bottom edges. It ended up taking the sharp tips off the
scissors, making them safe for my grandson to use. I rarely use the tips anyways, and this
morning they were cutting goat heads out of Schroeder Dog Park just as well as
ever.
Gardening
is easy, if you do it naturally.
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