The right tools will help your garden bloom and keep foliage trim and healthy. Here's how to find the perfect pruner and lopper for your fall-maintenance needs.
Regular pruning is an essential step in yard maintenance to keep your yard looking sharp. Pruning and lopping removes dead branches, encourages airflow between branches, and directs healthy growth. Removing the dead and diseased parts of a plant helps keep it strong, vigorous and more resistant to storm damage. Carefully cutting back plants also encourages them to produce more blossoms or fruit.
The Right Tools for Every Job
Pruners and loppers are both sharp, shear-like devices used to cut stems and branches. Pruners, also known as hand shears, are operated with one-hand, while loppers are larger and require both hands. Both The Fiskars Power-Lever Anvil Pruner and the Fiskars Pro Bypass Pruner work equally well whether you're right- or left-handed and have cushioned grips for comfort.
Loppers are long, and often have telescopic-pole handles to get at those tall jobs. A good lopper is a must-have if you have trees, climbing vines or large shrubs. If you're trimming bushes and small tree branches, try the lightweight Fiskars Anvil Lopper. For heavy-duty cuts, the Fiskars Power Gear Bypass Lopper provides greater leverage with minimal effort. All Fiskars tools are ergonomically designed, and models with Fiskars patented Power-Gear technology use gears to multiply your cutting power through even the toughest jobs.
Anvil Versus Bypass Models
Hand pruners and loppers are available with either anvil or bypass blades. Anvil blades have a single sharp blade that closes against an anvil, crushing and tearing off the stem or branch. They are useful for making blunt cuts to dead branches and all dry, hard and old growth. In bypass models, the sharp blade sweeps past the lower sharpened jaw of the device for a precise cut that's ideal for new green growth.
Fall Pruning
Maintenance pruning can be done year-round, especially in fall when many perennials are cut back to prepare for dormancy, and trees have less sticky sap.
- Remove dead, diseased or damaged tree branches
- Remove tree branches that may impede power lines
- Trim back shrubs for a tidy look
- Cut diseased-looking leaves and stems from perennials. Healthy woody, bushy and hardy perennials can be left to dry as their crowns protect plant roots over winter. Clean them up in spring.
- Cut back perennials with leaves that go "mushy" after first frost, i.e. hostas, perennial geraniums and coreopsis
- Deadhead any self-seeders that you want to keep in check next year
- Delay pruning tasks until as late in the season as possible, preferably after first frost, when pruning shrubs and trees won't encourage new growth (with the exception of cutting back "mushy" perennials, of course).
