Author Topic: Battery powered strimmer  (Read 6362 times)

davholla

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Battery powered strimmer
« on: November 22, 2018, 15:29:14 »
This is to keep the grass down between gooseberry bushes etc on the allotment plot. 
A) Is this the best way?
B) Any recommendations on model.

Our garden is so small that I never mow it.

MervF

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #1 on: November 22, 2018, 19:28:26 »
Just over 12 months ago, I bought a Qualcast CGT18LA1 18v strimmer from Homebase to use on my allotment.   It is absolutely brilliant and the battery lasts well.   I have tried looking who sells them but it looks as though they are no longer available.   I know that one lady who has a plot near me bought quite a cheap one from Argos and was really pleased with it.   Here is the Argos link - https://www.argos.co.uk/search/18v-strimmer/

davholla

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #2 on: November 22, 2018, 20:09:27 »
Just over 12 months ago, I bought a Qualcast CGT18LA1 18v strimmer from Homebase to use on my allotment.   It is absolutely brilliant and the battery lasts well.   I have tried looking who sells them but it looks as though they are no longer available.   I know that one lady who has a plot near me bought quite a cheap one from Argos and was really pleased with it.   Here is the Argos link - https://www.argos.co.uk/search/18v-strimmer/
  Thanks for that, stupid question, do I need to strim it in the winter (i.e now) or can it wait until Spring?

Palustris

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #3 on: November 22, 2018, 20:20:08 »
We have a GTech battery powered strimmer. It is rubbish. Avoid like the plague.
Gardening is the great leveller.

hippydave

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #4 on: November 22, 2018, 22:35:12 »
Bit more expensive but the Honda strimmer is fantastic, i use it now more than my petrol stihl strimmer. Very quite and a lot of power, the 4amp hour battery lasts a lot longer than the 2amp one and there is also a blower and hedge cutter in the range that will run off the same battery.
you may be a king or a little street sweeper but sooner or later you dance with de reaper.

MervF

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #5 on: November 24, 2018, 18:31:17 »
We have a GTech battery powered strimmer. It is rubbish. Avoid like the plague.
Wait until Spring - use the strimmer for the same season as a lawn mower - about April until usually end of September

MervF

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #6 on: November 24, 2018, 18:47:30 »
We have a GTech battery powered strimmer. It is rubbish. Avoid like the plague.
Wait until Spring - use the strimmer for the same season as a lawn mower - about April until usually end of September - sorry I put the reply on the wrong message

MervF

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #7 on: November 24, 2018, 18:54:10 »
We have a GTech battery powered strimmer. It is rubbish. Avoid like the plague.
Just over 12 months ago, I bought a Qualcast CGT18LA1 18v strimmer from Homebase to use on my allotment.   It is absolutely brilliant and the battery lasts well.   I have tried looking who sells them but it looks as though they are no longer available.   I know that one lady who has a plot near me bought quite a cheap one from Argos and was really pleased with it.   Here is the Argos link - https://www.argos.co.uk/search/18v-strimmer/
  Thanks for that, stupid question, do I need to strim it in the winter (i.e now) or can it wait until Spring?

Wait until Spring - use the strimmer for the same season as a lawn mower - about April until usually end of September - sorry I put the reply on the wrong message

Beersmith

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #8 on: November 25, 2018, 01:07:45 »
A strimmer is an excellent bit of kit. I have a good petrol driven one that is great for path edges.

But if you want to avoid the expense, you could consider controlling the weeds around your gooseberries by the application of a good thick layer of mulch from time to time. It's a lazy method. Only needs doing a couple of times each year but pretty effective. I do this around all my fruit bushes.

Also to be honest I can be a bit clumsy. With a strimmer it would not be long before I had got too close and stripped the bark off some innocent fruit bushes either killing it or at least doing a lot of damage. I wear steel toe caps when strimming for the very same reason!!

Not mad, just out to mulch!

Vinlander

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #9 on: November 25, 2018, 09:40:06 »
I can't see the point of strimmers on an allotment - unless you actually want ornamental grass in narrow lines etc.

If you want a grassy area for taking a rest then a small lawn makes more sense and a push mower will do a better job.

I see people using strimmers regularly "to make the place look neater" - for about a month - then they have to do it again.

In the process they waste far more time and effort than it would take to just dig the bloody stuff out once a year - in fact once for life if they mulch it properly.

What makes it even worse is the constant noise - in early summer the sound of angry strimmers begins, and on a large site there's hardly any respite from the racket - the sonic essence of futility - just misguided peer pressure and mindless worship of un-silenced internal combustion.

It destroys any tranquillity left between the boy racers round the outside, the angle grinders, the circular saws, the core drills etc. etc. etc. and now we can add the damned drones to the list.

Any area of grass can become the source of couch grass - it can't be mown out again, and it only takes a change of ownership, or illness or family problems to allow it in.

What's worse, over the years grass paths invariably develop such areas - and since there is no protocol to dig them out I have to waste precious growing space to maintain a cordon sanitaire that needs to be regularly dug.

At the moment battery strimmers are less of a problem - but that's mainly because they are pathetically underpowered - as soon as batteries improve and become cheaper they will be nearly as bad.

I've been moaning quite a lot lately because the downside of lithium batteries has finally emerged - it's now becoming unavoidable - street musicians are now 10 times louder than they were, and the ones that sneak onto trains are now deafening. There's an unwritten law that the loudest ones will be the most incompetent musicians you've ever heard - which attracts more show-offs with tin ears to do the same.

I was recently forced to leave a carriage because a trumpet player had a granny trolley with a backing track nearly as loud as he was... Needless to say he only hit one note in 3 - at best.

Aaaargh.
With a microholding you always get too much or bugger-all. (I'm fed up calling it an allotment garden - it just encourages the tidy-police).

The simple/complex split is more & more important: Simple fertilisers Poor, complex ones Good. Simple (old) poisons predictable, others (new) the opposite.

earlypea

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #10 on: November 25, 2018, 13:14:02 »
I don't think you need a trimmer if it's just for the fruit.  Weed and mulch, it'll grow better.

But, while I'm here, I can totally recommend the following if anyone's looking for an electric trimmer

BLACK+DECKER 36 V Lithium-Ion Strimmer with 2.0 Ah Battery
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00IJEEGHW/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Although it was only just over £100 when I bought it in March 2016.   It's been fantastic.  There are aberrations on my plot;  it's been dug down from the neighbouring plots by over a foot down two sides (what to do with that I still don't know, except strip it).  Plus I have nearly completely absent neighbours on two sides and have to hack back their weeds.  And we have paths to keep short, none of them even enough for a mower.

Before that I used to have to hire a petrol trimmer from time to time (BAIN!) and then I bought a cheap one from Tescos (Rubbish!).

This one lasts 40-50 minutes per session on middle eco setting which is quite strong enough and it's never failed me.  You can do edges of beds.  It's also light enough for me.

davholla

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #11 on: November 26, 2018, 08:16:31 »
A strimmer is an excellent bit of kit. I have a good petrol driven one that is great for path edges.

But if you want to avoid the expense, you could consider controlling the weeds around your gooseberries by the application of a good thick layer of mulch from time to time. It's a lazy method. Only needs doing a couple of times each year but pretty effective. I do this around all my fruit bushes.

Also to be honest I can be a bit clumsy. With a strimmer it would not be long before I had got too close and stripped the bark off some innocent fruit bushes either killing it or at least doing a lot of damage. I wear steel toe caps when strimming for the very same reason!!



Thanks for that, what is the easiest mulch to use?

Beersmith

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #12 on: November 26, 2018, 23:59:25 »
A strimmer is an excellent bit of kit. I have a good petrol driven one that is great for path edges.

But if you want to avoid the expense, you could consider controlling the weeds around your gooseberries by the application of a good thick layer of mulch from time to time. It's a lazy method. Only needs doing a couple of times each year but pretty effective. I do this around all my fruit bushes.

Also to be honest I can be a bit clumsy. With a strimmer it would not be long before I had got too close and stripped the bark off some innocent fruit bushes either killing it or at least doing a lot of damage. I wear steel toe caps when strimming for the very same reason!!



Thanks for that, what is the easiest mulch to use?

Purely a matter of choice.  I mix my allotment heap compost (well rotted) with equal quantities of well rotted horse manure. Seems to work fairly well as a weed suppressant, and feeds the bushes too.

But when suitable material was in short supply I once used several bags of shredded Forsythia prunings. I have a good shredder and prefer to make use of green and woody material if I can. It can help to put cardboard under the mulch for improved weed suppression.
Not mad, just out to mulch!

Digeroo

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #13 on: November 27, 2018, 20:34:10 »
I have one but it cannot knock the skin off a rice pudding,   I tried to buy a spare battery but it would have cost considerably more than I paid for the whole machine.   Do not buy the cheapest model.

I use it to strim down the side of my plots but it will only do one side per charge, though the grass is particularly tough.

I have a petrol one which is great but it is a bit heavy for me, and the support harness was not designed for anyone with boobs.


davholla

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #14 on: November 27, 2018, 20:39:37 »
A strimmer is an excellent bit of kit. I have a good petrol driven one that is great for path edges.

But if you want to avoid the expense, you could consider controlling the weeds around your gooseberries by the application of a good thick layer of mulch from time to time. It's a lazy method. Only needs doing a couple of times each year but pretty effective. I do this around all my fruit bushes.

Also to be honest I can be a bit clumsy. With a strimmer it would not be long before I had got too close and stripped the bark off some innocent fruit bushes either killing it or at least doing a lot of damage. I wear steel toe caps when strimming for the very same reason!!



Thanks for that, what is the easiest mulch to use?

Purely a matter of choice.  I mix my allotment heap compost (well rotted) with equal quantities of well rotted horse manure. Seems to work fairly well as a weed suppressant, and feeds the bushes too.

But when suitable material was in short supply I once used several bags of shredded Forsythia prunings. I have a good shredder and prefer to make use of green and woody material if I can. It can help to put cardboard under the mulch for improved weed suppression.

Thank you I don't have any compost material nor a shredder.  Any other ideas?  I need to get the pot looking good by the end of February or I will lose it.
Ideally cheap and easy mulch.

Would this be any good?

https://www.homebase.co.uk/j-arthur-bowers-bark-chips-100l_p402086

Tee Gee

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #15 on: November 27, 2018, 21:14:24 »
Quote
Thank you I don't have any compost material nor a shredder.  Any other ideas?  I need to get the pot looking good by the end of February or I will lose it.
Ideally cheap and easy mulch.

Would this be any good?

Check with your local council parks department if they stockpile tree/shrub shredding. Our councils Allotments manager arranged with the  Parks Department and we regularly get a load delivered to our plots for communal use.

Occasionally strangers (Not Plot holders) will visit the plot to get some shredding. I asked them how they got to know we had shreddings on our plots and apparently they contacted the council and were told they can get some off
the pile left on our plots.

Perhaps you could make a similar enquiry!

Beersmith

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #16 on: November 27, 2018, 22:28:50 »
Cheap and easy. Now that is a good question!

Bark chips will work well, although it will add no nutrition. Very easy to spread, and spread over cardboard will provide good weed suppression. You will need to remember to apply blood fish and bone or some other fertilizer at the appropriate time.

But cheap?  I fear not. 

Our local authority is very poor at providing any services like leaf mould, or shredded green materials. That's why I rely heavily on my own compost. If you do have to buy I'd suggest trying to get a big load of well rotted horse manure and use that. Ask your fellow plot holders - if there are good local sources someone will be able to help.
Not mad, just out to mulch!

Vinlander

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #17 on: November 28, 2018, 13:52:09 »
Cheap Mulching? I'm always ready to advocate the bargain basement method...

The cheapest, laziest sustainable method is old newspapers - but they won't stay down unless you put something on them to stop the top layer blowing away whenever it has a chance to dry off and separate (I keep meaning to try flour & water paste - but only if I can restrain myself from chucking out flour that has any pest in it).

If you use whole newspapers as bound, then as tiles they will last about a season (really thick ones can be opened). If you add another layer of 'tiles'  it will last 2 seasons.

Big winter branch prunings can be used full size to hold down their whole area and are remarkably effective even if each branch barely touches the ones around - so good it's obvious they must be cutting the wind speed almost to zero at ground level.

They can look better if you choose a plane on each branch to turn it into a fan shape and cut off anything going out of plane.

They can look better still if you cut all your remaining prunings to straight sticks and place them in the gaps until the paper is barely visible.

Even better you can cut them into 5-10cm lengths and then chuck them on - they will find their own spaces that way and by the time the paper has gone the chopped wood will have rotted to brittle and become a good soil improver for any soil that is too heavy or too light.

Incidentally, mulches never steal nitrogen - only digging it in while it's fresh can do that, and sawdust and shavings are the main culprits because of their huge surface area - the surface area of paper layers & sticks and even medium chippings is small enough to make sure any such process will be too slow to create a notch in the nitrogen levels, and if they are on the surface for a few months the soft tissues like cambium will be gone anyway before the soil gets near them.

Actually there's a similar logic to using plastic on the allotment - when it's in one piece it is no threat at all - but you must keep it out of sunlight or the UV will break it into flakes that are the most dangerous to wildlife and the most difficult to clean up.

Basically as soon as any part of a plastic object becomes brittle or tears then it's time to hoik it out and send it to recycling.

However if you put a plastic tarp (say) under a sustainable mulch then it can be the best of both worlds -

Firstly the tarp won't deteriorate in any way while it is covered - you can pass the tarp and the method on to your great-grandchildren and beyond.

Secondly, when the mulch becomes patchy you can either 1) sweep it all up and put it in the compost bin, or 2) into its own "soil conditioner" bin to mature before use, or 3) you can dig it in as it is (unless you already have goldilocks soil). Or 4) you can just add more layers on top. But, obviously, 1 & 2 are the sensible options if you are going to lay more paper.

Thirdly, especially important when using newspaper - perennial weed roots won't be able to run riot through the mulch.

Fourthly, the foxes won't be able to dig through it for worms (and mice tend to avoid nesting under plastic that is weighed down - they prefer it loose).

It's true that tarp is impermeable, but you can put fork holes through it without reducing its strength (you can't say that about ordinary plastic sheet). Working a cheap one (why buy anything better?) a few times will cause tiny holes to appear between the reinforcing tapes - holes that let water down without letting weeds up.

Couch grass will occasionally needle its way through - but it's easy to spot such incursions, and when you pull the root out it will be months before anything else finds the hole, and a few minutes work per bed per month will rapidly ensure that nothing still under there has the energy to try again.

I've been doing this for years, and if anyone can see a downside to this I'd be interested to know - I think it's the germ of a Top Tip and any help would be appreciated.

Cheers.

PS. Obviously the land improves more slowly under a plastic sheet, but if regular "changing of the sheets" is an opportunity for green manure or spreading compost (or putting the old mulch under the sheet) then it becomes another stage in crop rotation.

PPS. the mellow yellow liquid will turn newspaper into something much more fertile than a soil improver - but it should be mainly reserved for onion, beet/chard or asparagus beds - or any other crop that evolved near brackish water.
With a microholding you always get too much or bugger-all. (I'm fed up calling it an allotment garden - it just encourages the tidy-police).

The simple/complex split is more & more important: Simple fertilisers Poor, complex ones Good. Simple (old) poisons predictable, others (new) the opposite.

davholla

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #18 on: November 29, 2018, 15:02:30 »
@Vinlander
Thank yo.

I quite like this idea
"The cheapest, laziest sustainable method is old newspapers - but they won't stay down unless you put something on them to stop the top layer blowing away whenever it has a chance to dry off and separate (I keep meaning to try flour & water paste - but only if I can restrain myself from chucking out flour that has any pest in it).

If you use whole newspapers as bound, then as tiles they will last about a season (really thick ones can be opened). If you add another layer of 'tiles'  it will last 2 seasons."

But won't it look bad and get me chucked of the allotment?  If it were my garden I would have done it already.

Vinlander

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Re: Battery powered strimmer
« Reply #19 on: November 29, 2018, 20:30:41 »
@Vinlander
But won't it look bad and get me chucked of the allotment?  If it were my garden I would have done it already.

Well, it depends on how fussy the local powers that be are - they certainly don't like bits of newsprint fluttering about - because when they come off they will be litter (though now I've started remembering old fashioned paper litter quite fondly - it never choked a cow or starved a bird like plastic does).

The more you chop up the sticks that hold it down the less white(ish) paper is visible between them - taking that to an extreme would mean using woodchip - our plot gets woodchip free because the door-to-door pruners generate so much that it would cost them a lot to dump it on the council so they dump it on us - and everyone is happy :blob7:.

If you use woodchip without twigs it tends to blow onto the paths - nobody notices or cares but it has to be replaced because any exposed paper will flutter.

When I run out of twigs I use lines of paper gabions to corral the chip (a 10cm stack of once-folded newspaper with galvanised wire round the shortest way and pruned sticks on top poked under the wire lengthways to cover it). Nobody has ever complained about them.

I went through a phase of just using woodchip on tarp - it worked fine but I've moved back to putting newspaper between because it slows down the couch pushing through from below, and it also means the tarp never sees sunlight - even though the gaps are rare, they can still really reduce the life of the tarp - and that damages the whole logic of using it.

Any tarp plus sustainable mulch is far greener than exposing woven stuff - even high quality ones like Yuzet, Plantex etc. are only guaranteed for 5 years. Tarp plus sustainable mulch can even be pierced and planted through in the same way - though I'd draw the line at 45cm spacing (sweetcorn etc) anything closer would be a pain.

You can always say paper is much better than carpet - and it's very true - but only because the old wool & jute carpets were full of lead dust from the street - the dyes used heavy metals but very little, so weren't that bad when new.

New wool & jute made now would be great (with modern dyes that aren't based on heavy metals)  - except that all modern carpets are full of plastic - talk about 2 steps forward and 3 steps back!

Cheers.
With a microholding you always get too much or bugger-all. (I'm fed up calling it an allotment garden - it just encourages the tidy-police).

The simple/complex split is more & more important: Simple fertilisers Poor, complex ones Good. Simple (old) poisons predictable, others (new) the opposite.

 

anything
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