I have always used hemostats. My husband works in an OR and would bring me home the long handled ones when they toss them out. Recently I found a couple of long handled hemostats at Harbor Freight. They were inexpensive and work great for weeding around my cactus.

I did a search and found the curved ones on their website http://www.harborfreight.com/1... they call them clamps, guess that is for those who didn't know what a hemostat is?