URBAN FARMER:Pruning fruit plants is gruelling. Good tools make life much easier, writes Fionnuala Fallon

MANY years ago, as a student at the National Botanic Gardens, I was required to own a secateurs. Along with steel-capped boots, rain gear and a love of gardening it was a prerequisite to beginning the three-year course, so I went out and bought one. But, its being the Bots and all that, you weren’t allowed to buy the first secateurs that caught your eye. Instead, it was firmly stated that it should be no less than a Felco secateurs, and in particular the Felco 2 model.

“Sod that!” was my first reaction when the man at Mr Middleton Garden Shop told me how much this was going to cost, for, like any student’s, my pockets weren’t deep. “No, really, I promise you: it’s worth it,” he said with the evangelical air of a man who’s seen the light. “It comes with a lifetime guarantee. You’ll have it for years.”

He was right, of course, because Felco tools seem to be able to take the worst that gardeners can throw at them and still be as good as new. I’d be using the very same secateurs today if I hadn’t somehow mislaid it a few years ago in a particularly mucky garden. Since then I’ve tried many other brands, but they are pale imitations that make pruning a chore and leave you with aching, blistered hands. This one, on the other hand, turns even the most apathetic gardener into a suddenly enthusiastic – in some cases even overenthusiastic – pruner.

A visit to felco.com will tell you why, because there are no fewer than 16 models of Felco secateurs for sale. Some are designed for small hands and others for large, some for right-handed gardeners and others for citeogs; some are more basic models; others are more ergonomically designed, with added extras such as sap grooves to stop the blade jamming when cutting wet wood, shock absorbers to protect the hand and wrist from strain, and angled cutting heads to reduce the risk of muscular-skeletal injuries.

In other words, and for those of you who haven’t yet used one, you might say that these Swiss-made secateurs are the bee’s knees, the cat’s pyjamas, the nonpareil of all the secateurs out there.

I was reminded of all this when watching Meeda Downey and Brian Quinn prune back the summer raspberries in the OPW’s walled kitchen garden. Down on their hunkers in the dead heat of an early September afternoon, they snipped, clipped and pruned their way through row after row of summer raspberries, carefully cutting the old canes back down to the ground along with any weak or sappy growth.

Like all graduates of the Bots, they too were using Felco secateurs – a Felco 4 and a Felco 2 – and the brilliantly designed tools seemed to make the fiddly, time-consuming and tedious job that much easier. But, even so, Meeda and Brian still had quite a job on their hands.

“We’ve got a bit of a problem, because one of the autumn-fruiting raspberries – ‘Autumn Bliss’ – has run into one of the summer-fruiting raspberries – ‘Malling Jewel’ – but both of them have very different pruning needs. So we’re pruning back the summer raspberries while we can tell the difference. We can tell them apart now because the canes on the autumn varieties are only just beginning to produce fruit while the old canes on the ‘Malling Jewel’ have finished fruiting and are beginning to yellow and die off.

“We’re cutting those right back down to ground level now, along with any of the suckers or weaker canes, so that we leave about eight fat young stems per plant,” explains Meeda. “We’ll also cut down any stragglers that are getting in the way or spreading too far out from the row, just for ease of access. Then, after we’ve finished thinning them out, we’ll tie in any of the canes that are left to the supporting wires.”

Unlike the summer-fruiting types growing in the walled garden, such as ‘Malling Jewel’ or ‘Glen Ample’, the autumn-fruiting raspberries, such as ‘Himbo’ and ‘Autumn Bliss’, have very different pruning needs and shouldn’t be cut back until late winter.

“We’ll let them produce fruit now and then cut them right back to the ground in early February,” says Brian. “But the autumn-fruiting types don’t ever really need to be supported by wires, which is great, because we won’t have to spend hours tying in the young canes.”

The OPW gardeners have learned a hard lesson when it comes to keeping summer- and autumn-fruiting types separate. “Ideally, they should be grown in completely different sections of the garden. That way there’s no risk of mixing them up,” says Brian. “But for now we’ll cut back hard between the separate varieties, so that the problem of them growing into each other doesn’t get any worse.”

Any gardeners facing the similar chore of pruning their summer raspberries will be glad to know that Felco secateurs are available in almost all good garden centres. According to Thomas Quearney of Mr Middleton (mrmiddleton.com), they still come with a lifetime guarantee and are still the shop’s best-selling brand of secateurs.

“We never have a problem with them. A customer might bring one back to us, perhaps 10 years after they bought it, just to get the blades sharpened. Or, very occasionally, a customer might lose the spring, so we also stock a range of spare parts. Our best-sellers are the Felco 4, the Felco 5 and the Felco 2. The 2 is probably best suited to women, as it’s a lighter model; I use the 4 myself.”

Does he think they’re worth the extra money? “Without a doubt. There are a huge amount of lookalikes out there, cheaper versions that you can buy for €10-€15, but they’re nothing like the Felco when it comes to using them, and they don’t last anything as long. A Felco is for life.”

Unless you’re stupid enough to lose yours in a particularly mucky garden.

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The GIY (Grow it Yourself) 2010 Conference takes place this Saturday, September 18th, in the Guinness Storehouse, St James’s Gate, Dublin 8. Tickets are €40 (including lunch) and are available from the giyireland.com/shop. President McAleese will open the conference and key speakers will include GIY founder Michael Kelly, author Klaus Laitenberger, Diarmuid Gavin and Duncan Stewart. There will be further workshops in the afternoon with many others, including organic grower Nicky Kyle, chef Laurent Bertomier and teacher and allotmenteer, Michael Fox. GIYer of the year, Joe Hurley, will also formally receive his award at the event.

The OPW’s Victorian walled kitchen garden is in the grounds of Phoenix Park Visitor Centre, beside Phoenix Park Cafe and Ashtown Castle. The gardens are open daily from 10am to 4pm

Next week Urban Farmer in Property will cover growing celery

Fionnuala Fallon is a garden designer and writer

What to sow, plant and do now

Sow: Green manures, komatsuna, land cress, lettuce, mibuna, mizuna, mustards, salad rocket, spinach, winter purslane

Plant: Autumn onions and shallots, lettuce, Swiss chard, Florence fennel, spinach, kale, oriental leaves

Do: Continue harvesting, sowing seed, planting out young plants, weed/ hoe beds, prune summer raspberries, cut back foliage on potatoes, feed pumpkins, watch out for garden pests.