Secateurs The maxim that you should buy the best you can afford in terms of quality apply equally to secateurs and Felco stand head and shoulders above the competition. My first garden required extensive clearance and I bought a Felco no.2. Now 32 years old, they still work perfectly and are probably good for another 32 years. They also have the advantage of an adjustable and removable blade if sharpening is required. Although it seems obvious, your tools should be reserved only for the jobs they were designed to do. It's an easy temptation to grab your grafting knife or secateurs to slice open a cardboard box or cut through some string or plastic binding tape. Use a craft knife or scissors! And never lend them to anyone as you don't know in what condition they're going to come back in. Of the two types of cutting action, side cut and anvil, the former should be used as bruising is only applied to one side of the cut. If this is on the scion it can be trimmed away when the scion is prepared for grafting. Incidentally, it's an old wives tale that you should cut as close as possible to a bud or dieback may result. Above each bud are cells specifically designed to seal off the cambium layer in the event of damage of any kind happening to the shoot and collecting scion wood is a form of damage. The cambium will start to callus over straight away and if you cut one or two inches away from the bud, callusing will still occur right next to the bud rather than where the cut was made. The subject of pruning will of course be covered in comprehensive detail and illustrated in the forthcoming cultivation guide. For those of you who enjoy popping bubblewrap, snapping off the dead ends of twigs is equally enjoyable! One type of tool that has been promoted heavily in recent years is the ratchet action secateurs that allow greater cutting force for less grip. For dealing with the caliper diameter of the wood that propagators are going to encounter, this type is over engineered and also suffer from the rachet mechanism wearing out over time. For dealing with larger shoots and branches long handled loppers or pruners are more suited to the purpose and removes the temptation of using your secateurs as a jack of all tools.
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