Especially after cutting diseased trees or bushes, you should disinfect your secateurs to prevent you from passing viruses, fungi or bacteria to other plants. Find out below which products are suitable for disinfecting secateurs and what quick alternatives there are.
How can I disinfect secateurs?
To disinfect secateurs, you can soak them in alcohol, spirit or boiling water, or treat them with disinfectant spray. For frequent cuts, a wipe with high-percentage alcohol or disinfectant wipes can provide quick cleaning.
How can you disinfect secateurs?
Various cleaning agents can be used for disinfection, most of which need to take some time to work. A quick method is to burn it off with a torch. Here, however, you have to be extremely careful not to burn the plastic part. Other means are:
- boiling water
- Spirit
- Alcohol
- special disinfectant spray for garden tools
- Tea tree oil
Disinfect the secateurs step by step
In the following we will briefly explain how you can disinfect your secateurs step by step with spirit or alcohol.
- Unscrew the secateurs
- Roughly clean both parts with a metal brush
- Place the metal parts of the secateurs completely in a container with alcohol or spirit and wait at least 10 minutes.
- Alternatively, place the secateurs in a pot of boiling water and let them cook on a low flame for 10 minutes.
When is it necessary to disinfect secateurs?
Trees and bushes can become diseased. Pruning is then often necessary to remove infected parts of the plant. After such pruning, you should disinfect your secateurs, but not only then! Illnesses cannot always be recognized. It would be best to disinfect the secateurs after each bush, but that is very time-consuming. What alternatives are there?
Quick disinfection while working
Many gardeners who find it too time-consuming to thoroughly disinfect the secateurs after each plant cut have developed intelligent methods that may not kill all germs, but certainly increase hygiene and thus reduce the risk of infection. Three remedies have established themselves here:
- hard alcohol
- Spirit
- Disinfectant spray or wipes for household use
After each plant cut, put a shot of one of the above-mentioned products on a cellulose cloth and use it to wipe the cutting surfaces. The quick, although not quite 100% disinfection is finished.
Tip
Washing with warm water after each cut does not kill germs, viruses or fungi.
