Wednesday 19 October 2016

Hedge trimming

I've been able to trim the Orchard hedges today. We use a 230 VAC powered pole hedge trimmer, so a day without rain to avoid electrocution was essential. There's no mains electricity on the orchard so we had to bring in our petrol powered generator and a long extension lead to power the trimmer.  There's now about 140 metres of hedge to cut on the field side of the orchard following the hedge laying work a couple of years ago.  Cutting the top off the hedge once a year encourages the bushes to grow sideways and thicken the hedge. The blackthorn which forms most of the hedge has sprouted strongly and was quite tough to cut this year.


The hedge after laying in 2014

I'll be stiff tomorrow morning. The pole hedge trimmer is quite heavy to operate at chest height, and I spent 4 hours working on the hedge cutting. I only did one side and the top of the hedge. The outer side is not our responsibility as the hedge is a shared boundary.

Carrying the 40 Kg generator up and down the orchard field was quite tiring too. We have a 25M extension lead, but it is not quite long enough to reach all of the hedges. We have thought about retaining a contractor with a tractor mounted hedge flail to trim the hedges, but the positioning of the fruit trees effectively prevents the use of a large tractor in the orchard.

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