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Videos

Review of Fiskars Powergear Hedging Shear (Video)

by Genevieve on February 20, 2010

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If you’ve hung around North Coast Gardening for any length of time, you know that I’m a sucker for tools that do multiple jobs well.

This hedging shear is my go-to tool for cutting back perennials in fall and winter, pruning ornamental grasses and sword ferns in winter, and deadheading heathers and other plants that respond well to shearing. Yeah, you can also use it for hedging your boxwood into the shape of a rooster, if you wish. You gotta have a little fun in life, right?

You can see how it works in this video:

The best thing about the Fiskars Powergear Hedger is the metal used and the coating on the metal, both of which help the shears cut cleanly and stay sharp, and the gears that allow it to cut through much thicker stems than most pruning shears do (if you’ve tried using regular hedging shears to cut back perennials, you know it isn’t all that effective – the gear on this one makes all the difference!).

Resources:

Buy the Fiskars Hedging Shear at my OpenSky Shop

Buy the Fiskars Hedging Shear at Amazon.com

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Post image for Video Review of the Fiskars Pruning Stik, My Favorite Pole Pruner

Lightweight’s the name of the game for this pole pruner. I’ve been using these Fiskars Pruning Stiks for many years in my landscaping business and have not yet broken or had to retire one.

Many pole pruners fail because they try to do too much – they have a saw, a lopper, they extend, and thus they are heavy as sin and impossible to use for any length of time.

Maybe you’ve seen these pole pruner monstrosities – with a rope or chain looping from stick to lopper blade (ever get that rope caught in a branch that’s too tall to get to? UNCOOL, dudes.) and a saw that is difficult to maneuver at best and is asking for it at worst (try making a proper pruning cut from ten feet below – better yet, try guiding that branch to land someplace besides your head when you’re standing below it to prune!).

This is why I like the Pruning Stik. The rope that pulls the blade closed is flat and sits tightly against the pole itself, so it never gets caught in trees, it cuts branches up to an inch diameter with ease (larger if it’s soft wood), and it’s lightweight and so easy to adjust that I can prune with it for an hour without getting too tired. It weighs less than two pounds!

If you have vines, small trees or shrubs that need seasonal touchup, apple trees where you want to shorten last year’s shoots to encourage more fruit – anything where you’re pruning smallish branches for an extended period of time – pick up this Pruning Stik and save your body some stress.

Check it out below:

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How to Prune Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ (Video Tutorial)

November 30, 2009
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Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ is a true garden classic, especially paired with ornamental grasses, lavenders and colorful sages.
It’s particularly great because during the summer when everything else is blooming, its greenish-white buds are getting bigger and bigger, creating a subtly beautiful show, then as everything else slows for the fall, ‘Autumn Joy’ bursts into bloom with [...]

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Welcome to my OpenSky Store!

November 28, 2009
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If you’ve hung out at North Coast Gardening for a while, you know I have some, ahem, opinions about gardening tools. Felcos? Forget it!
But sometimes my favorite tools are a bit harder to find – they aren’t all on Amazon, nor are many of them at your local garden shop. So I’m really excited to [...]

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How to Summer-Prune a Floppy Miscanthus Grass (Video Tutorial)

September 26, 2009
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I’m a big fan of ornamental grasses because they add so much motion and life to a garden. If you use multiples, they’re an easy way of bringing a sense of continuity to a busy or scattered-feeling garden, because the effect of their foliage is so soothing.
Miscanthus is a favorite because it grows so fast, [...]

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How to Prune Hydrangeas (Video Tutorial)

September 12, 2009
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I love Bigleaf Hydrangeas (H. macrophylla), the traditional garden Hydrangea with either big mophead flowers or the subtler lacecap flowerheads. Most gardens have a Hydrangea or two tucked in, and why not? As long as they have composty soil and get watered regularly, they make a fantastic show of blooms with very little effort on [...]

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How to Deadhead Mexican Bush Sage or Salvia leucantha (Video Tutorial)

September 1, 2009
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I shot this video in December, when this Salvia was at the end of its blooming season and just starting to think about going dormant, but the advice for how to deadhead and prune it is still great for summer.
Right now, many of the Mexican Bush Sages in the gardens that I maintain are just [...]

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Wicked Plants Book Review (Video with Amy Stewart) Plus a Look Inside the Author’s Wicked Plants Garden

August 3, 2009
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I’m a huge fan of Amy Stewart, and I’ve read everything she’s written, including her bimonthly gardening column in our local newspaper and her writing at Garden Rant, so I was thrilled when I heard about her latest book, Wicked Plants.
I’m a professional gardener and a total plant geek, so reading all about the wicked [...]

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The Last Bookstore in America by Amy Stewart: Video Book Review

July 5, 2009
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OK, so this isn’t strictly gardening, but all ya’ll should know by now what a rabid fan of Amy Stewart I am. I love her writing on Garden Rant, I love Wicked Plants and the rest of her non-fiction books, and I love her chicken paintings. So when I heard she had released her new [...]

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Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants Book has Arrived! (with Video and a Contest!)

May 11, 2009

Read to the end of the article to find out how you can win an autographed copy of Wicked Plants!
Y’all know by now what a huge fan I am of Amy Stewart and her writing. As a plant geek, I love how accurate she is about the plants’ details (so many writers get basic [...]

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