Left Handed Pruning
7 March 2003

Eric Allan (Bert Fry) writes:

When you are winter pruning fruit trees there are two problems to be faced: how to do it and when to do it. In my case there’s a third problem. I’m left handed.

Being sinistral is akin to being disabled. I push persistently at the locked half of double doors. I habitually twist jam jar lids tighter and tighter. You should see me trying to cut something with scissors.

When I stroll down the orchard with secateurs the trees cringe. Wilfred used to say ‘Seeing you pruning is like watching a donkey with a knife and fork.’ With my right hand I get a clean slice but in the wrong place, with my left I’m in the correct spot but the cut is all ragged and torn.

The books say you should prune when trees are dormant between November and February. If you go early and there’s a mild autumn there’s a danger of mildew getting in, especially with my jagged cuts. Go in December and get a cold January there’s a danger of frost damage. So we always prune at the last minute just before spring bud-burst. Simultaneously, I pile fertilizer and manure round the base of the trunk so that when they take off they’re fuelled.

We follow the simple directions and clear diagrams in Pruning - a Royal Horticultural Society booklet. Real trees never look much like the illustrations of course and my efforts don’t look much like their finished product either but that’s my gauche-handedness. For most people the guidance will yield trees that burgeon and blossom and fruit prolifically. With this book a right-handed pruner cannot go wrong.

From time to time there are rumours of left-handed secateurs. I followed one to a garden centre where I was unable to get in. At the entrance, a knot of people were grumbling about the revolving door which had become jammed and whose alarm was hooting. Imprisoned within the door was an embarrassed and shame-faced man who had caused the obstruction by pushing the revolve in the wrong direction.

I reckon he was left-handed.

Bert once wrote a poem about pruning:

I can tickle up the compost heap in August
I can plant the peas and beans and corn in spring
I can spread manure round
Next year’s potato ground
And persuade the vine to twist and climb and cling

I can gather up the leaves from Birch and Hazel
But I’m agonised and full of doubt and tortured
When I lift the secateurs
And curse those wrecker curs
That dog the trim of fruit trees in the orchard

I can clip the hedge with shears and mow the grasses
But to me the pruning knife is just a sham
That’s the bullet and I’ve bit it
And I don’t like to admit it
But I cannot prune my fruit trees worth a damn

Eric's previous column>>

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