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Independent Tool Review
by Peter Brett - July/August 2008
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Rapid's Plant Fixer
For the gardener who has everything
Gardening enthusiasts, in my experience, can roughly be divided into two main groups:- the ones who watch a lot of gardening programmes and who always seem to be discussing the latest gadget they have purchased or comparing notes on what to buy. These gardeners are proud of their creations but are also looking for style and the Added Value that a garden brings to a property. And then there the gardeners for whom the challenge of not buying anything extra at all is partly what their gardening habit is all about. They are a real hangover from the Dig for Victory campaigns of World War II or the ones who still remember rationing. Look through their garden sheds and you will find plant pots dating back twenty years and balls of recycled string that were probably made in factories long since demolished.
The first group are perhaps not a problem for marketing people, since they probably would impulse buy a piece of kit if it was seen as potentially useful and not too expensive. The other group is a marketing nightmare, and yet they still have occasionally to buy things to feed their gardening habit.
The Rapid Plant Fixer is an ideal purchase for the first group of gardeners since it offers a relatively cheap and efficient method of fixing plants to wires, stakes or thin trellis. Developed from the Rapid Quick Load Fence Plier that was launched some time back, it is used to deliver a short length of coated garden wire accurately and efficiently to a spot on a plant stem where a plant needs support.
Rapid as a company has developed the art of stapling and fixing things for many years so it is only a short step from rows of wire staples, to rows of brads and on to rows of garden wire fixings. The ingenious bit is the many methods of delivering the fixings safely and with the right amount of “hold” on the plant etc.
The Plant fixer is odd-looking in the sense that its purpose might not be immediately clear to an end user. It reminds me of a pair of pliers with a small bullet magazine added. It has two grippy plastic red handles on shiny steel jaws, an adjuster mechanism and a ten centimetre long magazine/cassette for holding the garden wire fixings.
The adjuster mechanism has three positions set by pushing down the back of the black switch handle and moving it to either 1,2 or 3 marked in the steel jaws. At position 1 the staple is limited to a 16mm diameter wire ring, at position 2 it is 11mm and at position 3 it is 6mm. This allows the user to choose the most suitable size of wire ring to use on the stem that is being fixed.
There is also a lock position on the adjuster switch.
Loading the magazine is straightforward. You pull back the spring-loaded feed mechanism, pull down the magazine end cover and it flips open to allow a row of garden wire staples to be fed into the magazine. Push the end cover back over and release the feed mechanism and the staples are ready to be used.
I have the perfect gardening habit to make use of this Rapid Plant fixer in the sense that I grow a lot of beans and tomatoes in raised beds. Most varieties of tomatoes need supporting stakes or strings as their stems are not strong enough to support a good crop of tomatoes, while beans often need a little bit of help and support in their initial stages before they can start climbing up the canes provided. This is especially true on the windy hillside in Brighton where my garden is situated. Recent stormy winds have literally decapitated several of my bean and tomato plants.
Quite early on in the season I was able to use the Plant Fixer to gently fix the stems of my plants to secure canes to enable them to climb upwards and resist the winds. I mostly used the 16mm wire staple size to accommodate the canes and to allow a little bit of growth room for the stems.
The hog rings used in the pliers are available in three different variants, depending on application. The simplest one, which corrodes away and falls off after a couple of months, is perfect for supporting young plants. The galvanized ring, which lasts for at least a year irrespective of the weather, is ideal for securing branches or protective netting. The third variant, made of green plastic coated, (it is almost invisible), lasts a very long time and is perfect for the gentle care of delicate roses. Needless to say, the wire in each variant is supple enough to give the stem or branch room to grow. This I found to be the biggest advantage of the plant fixer. I can support the plant growth without worrying about the wire or string cutting into the plant and causing damage to the plant.
In use, the Rapid Plant Fixer did the job it was designed for quite efficiently without marking the delicate stems of the plants concerned. But some gardeners might well say that a small length of plastic coated garden wire is cheaper and just as easy, if not easier to use. For some tasks I would agree. It is quite easy to twist off a bit of wire from a roll and bind a wayward stem to a cane. But there is always a lot of waste as the tendency is the always take more wire than is needed to be on the safe side and I have drawn blood on occasion from the sharp ends of the twisted off wire. The plant fixer makes the job easier, what you need is taken care of by the size of the staple, resulting in proper lasting support. In truth I find myself looking for the plant fixer at first opportunity, it makes the support a much easier task.. People with arthritis or weaker hands would welcome the ease of use of the Plant Fixer rather than the hassle and fiddle of garden wire.
For retailers, the “Try before you Buy” packaging is a definite plus, as is the potential for repeat sales on the wire staple fixings. At a retail price of £14.99, the Plant Fixer is in the impulse buy range!
Independent Review by Peter Brett
Airstream Communications