Pruners Don’t Compost Well

October 27th, 2015

One tidbit of gardening information that I can now verify – pruners don’t compost very well.

Here’s what pruners look like after a year in the compost bin.

They rust nicely and become unusable after a year in a compost bin, but they don’t break down nearly as quickly as, say, spent bean leaves or grass clippings.

Why would I attempt to compost pruners, you might ask?

It was unintentional. My well-worn pair of Coronas were merely the latest garden paraphernalia to somehow turn up in my compost.

Emptying the compost to make way for the latest leaf-droppings and frost-yankings is an annual October ritual for me.

It’s a hard and not-so-favorite gardening chore, but it’s an important one. Composting recycles a yard full of organic waste that otherwise would end up in the trash stream, and it pays off with the absolute best soil amendment and plant fuel.

I look at my compost bins as an on-site “power plant” to keep my whole little botanical empire churning along.

But every year as I’m screening the compost to sift the fine “black gold” from the semi-composted rough stuff that becomes mulch, I find all sorts of surprises.

Usually it’s plant tags, pieces of jute or twisty-tie, and stray bottle caps. One year I found a spoon – probably one that got scooped up with apple peelings and inadvertently tossed in the stainless steel compost pail under the sink.

The pruners win the prize for the biggest stray item… so far. As my rapidly aging brain becomes more forgetful, I wouldn’t be surprised if the patio table ends up in there some year.

I’m always misplacing pruners, though, so it’s not too surprising that these are what found their way into the compost.

One of my main gardening jobs is regularly patrolling the yard for weeds and stray growth, and as I go on reconnaissance, I’m armed with a 5-gallon bucket in one hand and pruners in the other.

As I cut and stuff, I lay the pruners down. Usually they’re findable in the grass, but other times they mysteriously crawl under bushes or slink into the dense pachysandra or barrenwort groundcover.

I can’t tell you how many of my pruners have run away over the years. When archaeologists excavate my yard 2,000 years from now, they’re going to conclude that a tool factory must have been located here.

This is why I’ve never invested the money in a good pair of Felco pruners like so many smarty-pants horticulturists and professionals have. If I’m going to lose pruners after 2 weeks, I’d rather lose a $10 pair than an $80 pair.

This is despite the fact that I purposely pick orange- or red-handled pruners.

Most of them come in those bright colors, you’ll notice. I assume that’s because pruner-makers know that green- or brown-handled models blend into the yard surroundings too well, and that most gardeners wise up to the orange/red advantage after losing their first set.

You’d think it would be pretty hard to not spot a red-handled tool in any green surrounding. But ask my wife about my food-finding ability in the refrigerator and pantry, and you’ll see how this is entirely believable.

But getting back to my newly composted pruners, I’m going to guess that these got scooped up with a pile of weeds and tossed into my 5-gallon bucket, then dumped into the compost pile.

This pair was particularly vulnerable because it was the lone pair I managed to retain long enough to wear out the rubber handles.

The handles got brittle, cracked and started to slip off. So I resorted to the fix-everything solution of duct tape and was back in the snipping business in no time.

My big mistake was not using red duct tape. I went with standard gray.

Here’s something else I learned. Duct tape doesn’t compost very well either. It was dirty after a year but still very much intact and holding everything together.

If the blades weren’t rusted shut, I would be using my found pruners right now.

Instead, I had to toss them and count on doing a better job of not losing my 2015 pruners, a nifty Bahco-brand model with orange plastic handles (no rubber to crack).

I’m also wondering why no one has yet invented pruners with a built-in homing device. Or at least a brand that lights up when you clap.