Helen Yemm advises on battery mowers, trimming hedges and weedy raspberries

[Dani ♡]

 

Modern pull-start mowers are a lot slicker than their predecessors, I am told, but there are quite a few heavy-duty petrol mowers that conveniently have a key ignition system. The Honda model that I owned a few years ago is still on its lists, I see, and Mountfield and Hayter are other big-name manufacturers that make key-start machines.

However, might I take the opportunity to (yet again) loudly sing the praises of the latest battery mowers that you start with the press of a button or two? The range available is ever-increasing as their po[CENSORED]rity grows. Many, such as my small, trusty Bosch Rotak 37LI Ergoflex, are not self-propelled like your existing mower is, but being exceptionally light and manoeuvrable, they are brilliant for small lawns like mine.

I recently put a really big self-propelled battery beast through its paces on a much larger lawn than my own, in a friend’s big country garden. The thoroughly snazzy-looking machine did absolutely everything that a petrol mower does – but with no fumes and, of course, much less noise.

Despite the lack of a heavy roller on the back, I actually created “stripes” as I swished back and forth on a single battery charge, and the whole caboodle even folded up for storage on its beam end. As a final embellishment, it had headlights for those late-night mowing moments.

All in all, it (almost) made me hanker after a larger lawn. The beast on trial was the EGO LM2100E-SP. I strongly suggest you try to think beyond the familiar and take a look at it.

Tip of the week For those who have never tried simple softwood cuttings, Gel2Root (nugel.co.uk) contains a rooting hormone and allows you to watch the roots form. Insert cuttings through slits in cling-film-covered glass or clear plastic pots containing the gel.

If you are intending your hedge to grow a lot taller (griselinia, a bright and shiny New Zealand evergreen, will go to 6½ft/2m plus in a sheltered site), you should let it find its feet and wait until next year before pruning it in mid-spring, preferably using secateurs or loppers rather than a hedge-trimmer. Internet gardening forays can be, on occasions, a mixed blessing. “Worldwide” advice has to be carefully filtered, particularly about pruning, hardiness and so on. The unsure would do well to look at the RHS for helpful pruning pointers for specific plant groups (Google “RHS pruning groups”: there are 13 groups in all and advice about hedge cutting). Broadly speaking, even though it might be tempting to tidy them up in winter, evergreens should be pruned in late spring – March/April, or even later in cold or exposed gardens – so that subsequent new, tender shoots are less likely to be singed by late frosts. The exception to this are flowering evergreens (e.g. Viburnum tinus, Choisya ternata): pruning can be delayed until their flowers bow out, maybe even June/July. Timing of evergreen hedge cutting should take into account the bird-nesting season.

Rosemary Webster in Kendal has couch grass growing strongly in a row of (dormant) raspberry canes, and wonders if she should spray it with a weed killer now. I think not, on balance. Glyphosate does not have much of an impact on couch grass, so if these raspberries were mine I would grapple with the couch to curb its vigour as much as possible, not let it flower, and possibly try to contain its shallow rhizomes with a barrier – basically learn to live with it. Raspberries seem to triumph over all sorts of weediness around their feet. Emailers Ian and Beverley Cadwallader want to move some autumn raspberry canes to another part of their garden and ask “when?’’ Now, sharpish, having cut them down to about 30cm and before they burst into action. They should move well. A final thought: maybe Rosemary Webster could move her couch-invaded canes too and plant them elsewhere: digging up the best, washing their roots to remove every scrap of the couch’s bright, white rhizomes as she does so. The vacated couch patch could be stripped of the top few inches of soil containing the rhizomes and/or cleansed under black plastic for a year (at least).