{"id":10066,"date":"2021-09-02T06:50:08","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T06:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farmandanimals.com\/?p=10066"},"modified":"2021-11-13T09:35:42","modified_gmt":"2021-11-13T09:35:42","slug":"secateurs-and-pruning-shears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farmandanimals.com\/secateurs-and-pruning-shears\/","title":{"rendered":"Secateurs And Pruning Shears {A User Guide}"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Secateurs, pruning shears, anvil pruners, or just plain pruners are a small hand tool<\/a>, used for cutting stems, stalks, and branches. They are popular with gardeners, arboriculturists, plant nursery workers, farmers, flower arrangers, and conservationists who require a sharp, precision cutting tool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are Secateurs Used For?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"What<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Secateurs are used for trimming plants such as rose bushes, herbs including Rosemary, Thyme, or Mint, or small shrubs such as Lavender. They are also indispensable in the orchard or vegetable garden for cutting thin branches, ripe squashes, tomato plants, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their blades are sharp and usually have a curved edge. Some varieties are sprung in different ways, which can help to make them easier to use for people with weaker hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where Did Secateurs Come From?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A French aristocrat, Antoine Francois Bertrand de Molleville, is claimed to be the inventor of the secateur<\/a> in the early 1800s. However, it is more likely that the original concept stems back far further than this, as topiary practices in China have existed for thousands of years, and unique cutting scissors were used. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A variation of secateurs known as Anvil Pruners were designed in Kiel, Germany by Walther Schr\u00f6der in 1923. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1800s France secateurs were not a mass-produced item; they were a treasured, specialist tool of some worth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A newspaper article from 1840 tells of a riot happening in Beziers, Southern France when an agricultural committee could not agree if secateurs were superior for cutting vines than the more traditionally used pruning knife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is important to understand here is that the growing of wine grapes in that region of France was a massive industry that gainfully employed much of the population. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is still one of the largest producers of wine in the world today. The workers feared that a device such as the secateur would rob them of work trimming the vines, as fewer people could do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly when they first arrived in the United States is unclear, but there are newspaper advertisements for them in the UK from the late 1800s and in Australia by 1911, so it is reasonable to suspect they would have been imported into the US around the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to Sharpen Secateurs?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Secateurs are an essential tool for anyone who has a garden or grows vegetables or fruit trees. Like other bladed hand tools, they are only really worth having if they\u2019re sharp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cutting through sappy stems not only clogs up the blades but also blunts them over time. It\u2019s essential when cutting plants that the cut you make is always clean and sharp; otherwise, disease can get in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To sharpen your secateurs, you will need:<\/p>\n\n\n\n