Pruning Cleanup Made Easier

Trees and shrubs usually need to be pruned on a regular basis. Cleaning up after the pruning is the hard part for me. To accomplish this more easily I use pieces of 1/4" braided nylon rope. Always be sure to fuse the ends of your rope before using it.

Always wear safety glasses to save your eyes and leather gloves to avoid gouges, scrapes, pokes and cuts.

As I see it, the most important factor to easier cleanup is to place the cut ends together in a pile as you remove branches. Once you have a small pile, wrap a rope around the prunings near the cut end and tie it off, compressing the bundle as much as you can. Add a second rope towards the top of the branches, again compressing the bundle as much as you can before tying it off.

We have had a big wheel garden cart for years and it is very useful for hauling the tied bundles and many other outdoors tasks. Our prunings go to a burning pile since we live in the country but whether you take your prunings to a municipal compost site or burn them, be sure to remove the ropes.