Department: Turf
It was much too wet today, but still turf needed to be cut because of the rate it's growing. I went round the rest of Seven Acres. In this weather James suggested to almost do 32 point turns. Some part of the ground was definitely waterlogged, we tried to avoid these areas where possible. The John Deere ride-on I was on made a lot of mess, grass stuck to it's wheels and didn't like coming off except in big clods. And it wasn't hoovering up very well, leaving small trails of wet grass. We kept leaf blowing them off before we moved onto another patch or when we dropped too much mess onto the paths.
We also had a bedding planting day with Formal - the weather was sunny and clear for a bit so we did some planting, but it got insensible after lunch. After not much success of jobs - stopping and starting in the rain (strimming under the hedge in the Rose Garden - but it felt like doing damage than being constructive - as it whipped the feet of the hedge which has grown nicely right to the ground and risked scalping the lawn rather than cutting the long pieces at the edges which were lying flat often), Simon showed us how to sharpen lawn mower blades.
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| Photo 1: The bedding is Rocket Science (in celebration of the RHS collaboration with space ventures), they have raised areas to be craters and for explosions of colour to be flowing from them. Types of flowers being planted - Cosmos 'Violet', Thunbergia 'Susie Black Eyed Orange' (a tumbling orange vine), Aster 'Hilary, Rudbeckia 'Tiger Eye', Ipomoea and Gazanias. Quite a few things have been sown by prop - in fact I was there when we did some of these. All these plants mentioned are in the craters themselves overspilling and then the rest of the areas are covered in Cerastium tomentosum, in which I helped sow thousands of. |
Sharpening lawn mower blades:
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| Photo 2: Taking the blade off held in by nuts and bolts with a spanner. Using a wooden wedge to help stop the blade from moving and providing some leverage. We screwed in the nuts and bolts loosely to not lost them. |
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| Photo 3: This was the balancing magnet contraption so which side the blade may be more weight and may need sharpening more. The idea is to get the blades as balanced as possible. |
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| Photo 4: Sharpening the blade with a file - almost straight up action one direction. |
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| Photo 5: Then as we're putting the blade back in, we grease the screw in part of the bolt with this special copper grease. |
It's important that the blades are balanced because if not it would cause too much vibrations and the blade can shoot off, so it can be very dangerous.
