I have used hemostats forever to pull weeds around my cactus. My DH works in an OR and they sometimes throw them out if they get nicks, so he will bring them home for me. I found some longer ones at Harbor Freight just the other day. Here is a link
http://www.harborfreight.com/1... they call them clamps. The longer handle works really well around cactus where you can't get your hand in close. I pull a lot of just coming up desert willows from around cactus with mine.
