The best tools ever for brambles and thornbushes

peasant

Our "garden" is blessed with lots and lots of whitethorn, hawthorn, even more blackthorn and all overgrown by brambles.

Keeping them in check is a major pain (quite literally) and over the years I've tried pretty much everything. Hedgecutters (electric and petrol), brushcutters with blades and even a chainsaw pruner ...all useless.
The stuff is either to soft to get cut or to thick for the machine and progress is painfully slow plus the machines are too heavy and unwieldy.

What kind of works is mechanical shears, cutters and saws. But these are a close contact sport (the thorns usually win) and you're constantly changing from one tool to the next and back again to make any inroads.

What does work is a slash hook or hedge knife:

got one in the local co-op and it really makes fast work of getting those hedges cut. It's hard work though and the long handle makes an exact aim difficult while tiring you out in no time.

But what really really works is this yoke:


A billhook.

On holidays I had seen Cuban gardeners doing all their gardening work with a machete. At first this looked a bit weird but on closer observation it turns out that this really is a useful tool ...so I wanted one.

Imagine the faces of the people behind the counters of local shops when asking for a machete
All I was ever offered was the slash hook that I already had ...nothing with a short handle.
Buying a machete off the internet from survival or prepper pages didn't really seem like a good idea either...imagine the faces at customs.

Until I found this site:
http://www.irishforestryproducts.ie/pruning-tools---blades.html

there it was ...my machete, albeit with a hook at the front.

and the hook ist the bit that probably makes it even better than a straight machete. This thing works like a knife, like small axe, like scythe, like a sickle and when you're all done you can gather it all up with the hook.

Best "rough" gardening tool ever ...plus it lets you feel like Bear Grylls in the jungle

aujopimur

Also comes in handy at some types of ethnic/traditional weddings and funerals.

SmartinMartin

Great weapons there altogether in the bramble wars. An uncle died a few months back, and the place was overrun, so a couple of weeks ago I dug out identical cutters as in your 2 photos, spent an hour with oil and a whetstone and a week murdering every encroaching stem I could find. Very satisfying.

taxusbaccata

I removed a well established stretch of briars with the slash hook. A tip - don't have it sharp - when it is blunt you will hook around the base of the plant and root and the whole thing will be ripped out.
What I noticed is that for permanent clearance you must go back and remove the emerging seedlings for 2-3 years - there will be decades of blackberries which have fallen down where you disturbed in additional to root remnants.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

To be honest hacking down brambles is a complete waste of time, as they then grow stronger and produce multiple stems from each cut. You need to get the roots out or kill the root off.

peasant

Brambles aren't all bad ..they give you blackberries and they make a pretty good dog-proof fence

Eradicating them is one thing, "cultivating" them quite another ...and that's where these tools (and especially the billhook) come in very handy

Francie Barrett

Historically, I would have dug brambles out, but in the last 2 years I discovered Roundup, and it's all I would ever use now.

dxhound2005

If you do a search for Chillington Hoe you will find some threads from years back. I have two of them a large one and a smaller one, which I got from the Organic Centre in Leitrim. I only use them for digging, but I would think they could be useful for clearing brambles and the like, if you want to avoid chemicals.

https://www.quickcrop.ie/product/chillington-heavy-duty-hoe

For ground clearance of overgrown ground there is nothing better as a manual hand tool. The hoe head can chop straight through tree roots and simply smashes woody growth, clearing the densest of weedy ground. Briars and small woody growth is no problem, and you are able to clear the root system at the same time.

monkeynuz

peasant wrote: »

Our "garden" is blessed with lots and lots of whitethorn, hawthorn, even more blackthorn and all overgrown by brambles.

Keeping them in check is a major pain (quite literally) and over the years I've tried pretty much everything. Hedgecutters (electric and petrol), brushcutters with blades and even a chainsaw pruner ...all useless.
The stuff is either to soft to get cut or to thick for the machine and progress is painfully slow plus the machines are too heavy and unwieldy.

What kind of works is mechanical shears, cutters and saws. But these are a close contact sport (the thorns usually win) and you're constantly changing from one tool to the next and back again to make any inroads.

What does work is a slash hook or hedge knife:

got one in the local co-op and it really makes fast work of getting those hedges cut. It's hard work though and the long handle makes an exact aim difficult while tiring you out in no time.

But what really really works is this yoke:


A billhook.

On holidays I had seen Cuban gardeners doing all their gardening work with a machete. At first this looked a bit weird but on closer observation it turns out that this really is a useful tool ...so I wanted one.

Imagine the faces of the people behind the counters of local shops when asking for a machete
All I was ever offered was the slash hook that I already had ...nothing with a short handle.
Buying a machete off the internet from survival or prepper pages didn't really seem like a good idea either...imagine the faces at customs.

Until I found this site:
http://www.irishforestryproducts.ie/pruning-tools---blades.html

there it was ...my machete, albeit with a hook at the front.

and the hook ist the bit that probably makes it even better than a straight machete. This thing works like a knife, like small axe, like scythe, like a sickle and when you're all done you can gather it all up with the hook.

Best "rough" gardening tool ever ...plus it lets you feel like Bear Grylls in the jungle

That is a Swiss hook, a bill hook is generally heavier.

Melodeon

These are the people who know all there is to know about managing thorny/woody vegetation:
Hedge Laying Association of Ireland

...and all the tools anyone could ever want for this sort of thing:
Timeless Tools