mm4birds

I had a problem trimming leaves that either were dead or bent over by strong winds and made my yard look very unsightly. I tried using my long Fiskars tree pruner but found the blade to be too coarsely serrated and the base of the leave shredded but hung on. For leaves lower down I use a sharp edged kitchen knife but couldn't use it higher up. I tried looking for a similar blade for the pruning pole but couldn't find one so I improvised like McGyver using duct tape and the same knife and found it worked great even on plants with a 12 to 15 feet of pseudostem, leaving a clean cut. Here are some pictures of the device:

sunfish

Amazing

Dangermouse01

I made something similar. Attached an old serrated kitchen knife to the end of a piece of 1" dia PVC pipe (pipe was 4' long). Then I put a threaded fitting on the other end of the pipe, and put the other threaded coupling part on another 4-5' long piece of pipe.
With just the 4' part with the knife, I can probably reach about 75% of the stuff, and the length is short enough that it doesn't get in the way working around the shorter plants (Raja Puri and Gran Nain). Thread the 2 pieces together and I can get to anything else I need to.

DM

mm4birds

this pole is the 14 foot fiskars bypass pruner which works well for the really tall plants and can be brought down to 7 feet for the shorter ones.