Yucca tidying: the pineapple-ectomy Part II

I've written about this a couple of times before, but it bears repeating: I have invented the technique of the "pineapple-ectomy" for dealing with the annoyingly spine-tipped leaves of our dear friend the Yucca.

This technique involves simply cutting off the lower leaves.  All of the ones which try to stab you in the face as you weed around them, plus all the leaves which have drooped, or bent, or are growing at weird angles.

Now, I demonstrated this technique to a Client, who took to it with great gusto: but didn't quite do it as fully, and thoroughly ,as I would - which probably means that I didn't describe it well enough...

Here's what I was faced with, along with their plaintive cry "Why don't my pineapple-ectomies look as neat as yours?!"

Long story made short: "Because you didn't cut the leaves off as short as you could have done."

Back came the response, along with a slightly injured expression: "But I cut them off as short as I could?"

Aha, but not short enough, my dear! *twirls moustache*

(It's ok, I don't really have a moustache)

Never mind, I said, let me show you how I do it.

Out came the secateurs, and I started clipping off the short stumps of leaves, as close to the main trunk as I could get them.

As always when doing this, once you get one or two cut off, it gives you the space to get your fingers in much closer, and it suddenly gets a lot easier.

Here it is, partially done: you can see the difference in the length of the leaf stumps, by comparing the three on the left, to the ones at the front.

At that point, I handed it back to the Client, as it were, and they gleefully fell on it: that is a figure of speech, they didn't actually fall on it, otherwise we would have been mopping up the blood for the rest of the morning.

Yes, they are that spiky.

The Client, to make it clear, set to work, with cries of glee, and in no time it was properly pineappled, and looked super neat and stylish, just as we had planned. 

No more being stabbed while weeding! No more being stabbed while deadheading the rose which is annoying close to it!

So if you're thinking about applying this technique to your own Yuccas, that's all you have to do - just remember to cut back as harshly as you possibly can: right back, close to the main stem.

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