by Stan Logan | Aug 19, 2018 | Garden tools
I had 13 hand pruners . . until I brought a lot of them to the Tools and Treasures table. What is surprising is that I only used one of them 95% of the time. The Corona Thinning Shear is the one tool that really makes me panic when I lose it some place in the garden. It is small enough to hide in mulch or in a pile of clippings. But smallness is one of its attributes. I imagine that most of you garden with your pants on. By that I mean you wear pants with pockets. The slender profile of the pruner allows you slip in your rear pocket. It doesn’t stick out far and catch on anything. The blade tips are rounded so there is no danger of immediately creating a hole in your pocket or tender parts. The other feature that makes this a “must have” for me is the fact that the cutting blades are long and thin. You can reach into tight spaces. Cuts can be made close to an adjoining stem. Yet the blades are strong enough to cut through thick plant material. I have to admit that I also occasionally use it closed as a weeding tool particularly between pavers. Also with closed blades you can jam it into the soil to loosen a stubborn weed. Although it’s hard on the cutting edges, this is the best tool I have for cutting off oak tree seedlings beneath the soil. Fortunately the straight blades are easy to sharpen. I use this “thinning shear” to clean up cannas, prune grape vines, gingerly trim quince, cut back new growth on cherry and plum trees, and even prune the roses. Yeah, I know I should use a knife edge bypass pruner, but this practically perfect pruner is already in my back pocket so that is what gets used. OK, why isn’t it absolutely perfect? If dried plant juices build up on the blades, the blades will start to stick. Use either oven cleaner, WD-40, or carefully sandpaper the inner surfaces to remove the buildup. You also have to remember this is a light weight pruner. It will not cut through a hard, woody stem generally thicker than ¼ inch. It’s at this point that I bypass the bypass hand pruners and reach for a lopper. I love my thinning shear. I feel it is a “must have” in your arsenal of garden weapons.
Convinced? This tool is available at Amazon as FS-4350 Thinning Shear and, wisely so, is Amazon’s Choice at less than $20.
P.S. If you are looking for an entertaining activity at a party, this pruner is invaluable. Stun you guests with the disappearing pruner trick like I showed you when I deftly slipped the pruner into my back pocket. You can create a contest by seeing which guest can perform this trick the fastest. (It would be sad if you thought for a moment that I was serious.)
I hope you’re not a dead horse. I cannot help but to continue to work on you to buy a thinning pruner. In the last two days I have used mine to cut out the dead woodwardia fronds, to trim back a grape ivy in a hanging basket, to prune lightly forsythia and the yesterday, today, and tomorrow, to cut back the flowering quince and to dead head canna. Finally this morning I tackled the grape vines on the pergola in the back yard. Every year at this time I have to remove all the moldy grapes that have developed. Poor air circulation ruins the crop each year. I have to climb a ladder and reach up through 2 x 4’s to cut grapes out. I suddenly realized why I treasure my pruner. It increases your reach. It’s like reaching out with a pair of scissors. So if you have light pruning to do, or pruning that requires reaching between thorns, objects, or other branches, this thinning shear is for you. It is not for pruning roses and it will not cut woody stems much larger than ¼ inch, but if your garden is anything like mine, there are almost endless uses for this great tool. And, remember how easily it fits in you back pocket?
Once again, it’s available on Amazon—Corona FS-4350 Thinning Shears.
Happy Pruning, Stan
4350 thinning shears
by Stan Logan | Jul 2, 2018 | Garden tools, Weeds
You know well the saying, “Do as I say–not as I do”. Well, guess who was burning weeds with his torch when there was no breeze. I was getting rid of the last moss plants in the garden. Smoke billowed up and surrounded my face burning my eyes. I moved side to side to no avail. I don’t think another saying applies—“Smoke follows beauty.” applies here. (Does that bring back memories of sitting around the camp fire?) So I smelled like burned weeds the rest of the day—big deal. But the next day my wife was alarmed at my sight. (Not an uncommon occurrence.) Sure enough, my right eye was bloodshot. Actually bloodshot is hardly sufficient to describe the sight of this valuable little orb. So I e-mailed my Doc. and the response was to apply eye drops and notify her if my eyeball falls out (a slight exaggeration). Sure enough after a couple days, it disappeared . . the blood, that is. So once again, if you use a torch to burn weeds, do so when there is a slight breeze so that smoke doesn’t rise directly up and turn you into a smelly, scary creature.
Stan, The Blog Man
by Stan Logan | Jul 2, 2018 | Garden tools
Alas, I have run out of the garden tools I wish to write about—except for this one. It is one of my favorites and I would have told you about it sooner had it been available. The company in Grants Pass, Oregon, for various reasons has not had the long-handled version of this tool in production for several years. A recent call to them revealed a possible resumption of production.
The circle hoe is, as the name implies, a hoe with a circular blade at the end. When the hoe is held in the standard position, the circle attains a vertical position. When you pull the hoe towards you, the sharpened edge of the lower surface slices through the soil to cut off the roots of weeds below the coil level.
So why is this tool special? The circular cutting blade is 1/8-inch-thick so if you have the strength, this tool will transfer that strength to cut through well-developed tap roots. The cutting surface is small, so there is little soil resistance as you pull through even clay soils. The sides and back of the blade are dull so you can maneuver closely around plants without damaging them. The circle hoe is better than a hula hoe in that it is not only stronger, but less soil is disturbed. If you are weeding in bark cover or a mat of pine needles, less material is messed.
Happy weeding,
Stan, The Tool Man
by Stan Logan | Jul 2, 2018 | Garden tools
One person’s flower is another person’s weed. I thought the moss plants growing in the iris garden were attractive. Today I find that LaVille feels differently. I wish she had told me sooner, as there are now large patches of moss growing among the irises and in the paths. So I started torching the moss plants today. I finally quit when my eyes were burning from the smoke that arose from the conflagrations straight up into my face. My advice to you is that if you purchase a torch, doing your burning when there is a slight breeze. Then you won’t stink of burned debris as I currently do.
Last evening and this morning I spent a lot of time pruning back recent grow on bushes and vines. It is amazing how much growth has taken place in the last few weeks. As I used my favorite thinning pruner that I have shown you several times, I cannot stop hoping that you have purchased this tool. The long slender blades easily reach into a plant to reach the desired stem. New growth is thin, so little mechanical advantage is needed, therefore the blades move more rapidly than those of other pruners. Need I remind you how easily they fit in your back pocket? If you lost my list of tools for the gardener, this pruner can be found on Amazon—Corona FS-4350 thinning shear.
Stan, The Blog Man
by Stan Logan | Jun 11, 2018 | Garden tools
I have been sleeping well at night. Now that SPPC has given me the opportunity to express thoughts, my mind isn’t going crazy with ideas and keeping me awake. Now it’s my wife’s turn. She lost a lot of sleep last night thinking about clay projects. So she left me today to work at Alpha Fine Arts in Sacramento. (She is coming back though.) So much creative talent, and so little time.
While playing in the garden today, several thoughts came to mind. At least some of you have continued to resist removing your lawn to conserve water. I am one of these. I love my lawn. At one time it covered the entire back yard. Now it’s far less than 1000 square feet. It contains no weeds, but there are a few brown spots where my son’s dog has done his thing. I love it best when the grandkids are here. See, they have no lawn. Their house is on a steep slope in the hills above Los Gatos. The creek that runs 100 yards below them represents the line of the San Andreas Fault. So you see, it is a treat for them to have a lawn to play on. The girls do cartwheels and wrestle about. At lunch time they spread out a blanket and they lie on their backs in the shade of the hackberry tree while they eat their Nana special sandwiches (strawberry jam, creamed cheese, and peanut butter}. This is really why I love my lawn.
So if you still have a lawn, I hope you have a mower that has a good vacuuming blade. Practically all mowers come with a mulching blade that does not do a great job at sucking up plant debris. You generally can order a blade that does a good job at vacuuming. There unfortunately is no such blade for my Craftsman mower. What do you do with your clippings? I hope you use them for mulch around your plants in the vegetable garden. If your clippings go into the organic recycle bin, I would suggest that you put a layer of dry plant material in first so that the grass clippings don’t form a gooey mess that sticks to the bottom of the bin. Another suggestion is to leave the bin lid open. This lets the contents dry out and this eliminates a lot of odor and prevents the condensation on the bin inner surfaces that gathers debris when the bins are dumped. Now . . . if you just had a power washer, you could keep all your bins clean enough to eat out of . . . Perhaps that’s a stretch.
Stan, The Blog Man
by Stan Logan | May 29, 2018 | Container plants, Garden tools
SPPC 5 23 18
If you have a twist tiller and no longer are using it, I will buy it from you. A member of the Iris Club wants one. She also wants 2 round nose and one flat end shovels, a pick axe, hula hoe, rake, and wheel barrow.
If you have harvested too many bananas at one time, (You do have a banana tree in your garden, don’t you?) as soon as a banana starts to get those brown spots, put them in the frig. They may turn really ugly, but the fruit will stay palatable for days.
A tool you may wish to consider is a rubber mallet. Removing a plant from a pot is generally easy with plastic pots. You are able to squeeze the sides to loosen the soil. But with a clay or ceramic pot removal can be a chore. This is a two man job, but if one person supports the plant and soil on its side or up-side down, the other person can rap on the top of the lip of the pot to knock it loose. Using a block of wood with a regular hammer will also work and keep you from breaking the pot.
Stan, The Blog Man
