A neat trick for trimming your mediterranean fan palm

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Mediterranean fan palms are a great choice for the Phoenix, Arizona area. They love heat, and they laugh off the coldest temperatures we get here. There are a couple of drawbacks, though - they get wide and bushy (and look their best that way), and the needles on the fronds are razor sharp.

Here at The Tropical Paradise, I have given my Mediterranean palms plenty of room to grow. Mostly I don't bother trimming them at all, and I found after trimming them last year, for the first time since they were planted, that it was a dangerous job. Then I remembered some advice I had received from a person who trimmed rose bushes - long leather gloves.

I bought a pair of long leather gloves (about twenty dollars at Lowe's) and some new bypass pruners (about ten dollars) and I went out to experiment. I works great!

The leather gloves really do protect your hands and forearms from those deadly spikes. As I write this, I don't have a scratch on me, and I just trimmed a lot of fronds off.

By the way, my hand brushed across one of those agaves, which are extremely sharp, and I hardly noticed it. The new leather gloves work great!

My Mediterranean fan palm last summer 

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