Pennyaline wrote:

Persephone wrote:
On Wed, 21 May 2008 13:28:04 -0500, Newbie
wrote:

Please recommend a weed-puller for stand up
use by a person who has back problems so can't
work in bending posture.

I totally sympathize, having back problems
myself, but can't image a
standup weed puller being practical. If there
is one, congrats!

I solve the problem by kneeling. If there's
quite a patch to do, I may even lie down,
favoring my (car accident damage) hand, and
weed with the other.

Hope you don't also have kneeling
problems...just sharing my experience.


No one should bend over to pull weeds. It should
be done kneeling. I've found that one of those
raised kneeler benches works well. The grips on
each side help to control the velocity of
descent and take a lot of strain off the back --
and give you something to push off against when
returning to standing position --, and the
kneeling surface is (for me) much more
comfortable than kneeling directly on the ground
or even one of those pad jobbies.

Garden centers sell them. You can also find them
on the internet. But I got mine at Target:

http://tinyurl.com/5vlznm

I have found that sitting on my butt on the ground
and leaning forward actually helps with my back
problems. I have bilateral and central spinal
stenosis and I think the leaning forward from
sitting actually helps decompress the lumbar
vertibrae. I merely scoot along the ground on my
butt and don't stand up between.