If you have more shrubs and perennials than lawn, you’ll be using your pruners more than any other tool, so it’s nice to take a few moments to think about the steps you go through and consider a few tips to make the job easy on your body and wholesome for your plant.
The Two Types of Pruners
There are two ways that pruner blades cut: bypass-type and anvil-type. We’ll describe both here, but you should probably buy and use bypass pruners.
Bypass pruners, the most common kind, have a single-edged blade that slices past a thick base as it closes.Anvil pruners have a blade that slices to the center of the fat lower base, contacting that base at the completion of the cut.
Why are bypass pruners the best? Anvil-style pruners let you exert extra force, but hand pruners are not meant to be forceful. They are meant to be accurate and make a razor-clean cut. A well-honed bypass cutter does this. Anvil-style pruners are more likely to crush, especially if not perfectly sharpened—crushing a plant stem is an awful thing to do to it. It’s the equivalent of a surgeon bludgeoning off your wart instead of properly removing it. As long as you keep your solemn Gardener’s Oath to switch to loppers when your wood is too thick for hand pruners, you have no reason to own anvil-cutting pruners.
General Technique for Pruning With Hand Pruners
Other Tips and Cautions For Using Pruners
Work comfortably. The primary concern with pruner use is that you are making a lot of cuts using just your hand muscles. This can lead to fatigue and soreness, and repetitive stress injury at worse. To stave off these problems always use the deepest part of the blade to cut, to get maximum leverage. Operate the pruners with the balls of your hand and finger bases, not fingertips. When the wood resists a pruner cut due to its thickness or density (ironwood is a lot harder to cut than pine), switch to your loppers. Try carrying them in a belt holster for easy access. Go to a place where professional gardeners work, such as a botanical garden, and you will see that everyone is carrying a pruner on his or her belt. Buy a holster that your pruners fit snugly into and with a hole at the bottom. This allows wood chips, dust, and debris to fall out instead of collecting in there, as it will tend to. Don’t cut wires. At some point, you will be tempted to cut a piece of metal wire with your pruners. Don’t do it; you will permanently nick the blade, making every single cut you make afterward just a teeny bit harder. Some pruners, though, have a small notch where the wire can be inserted and cut. Keep ‘em sharp and clean. Dull pruners are useless and easily sharpened. Marie Iannotti has you covered with her gallery step-by-step on cleaning and sharpening pruners.
