Today I did strimming of the orchards with Gerry, this is a constant ongoing job at the end of the year. The paths get sprayed earlier in the year. This is done with a tractor attachment, an air blast sprayer called IDEAL - which gives 10 bar of spray pressure every 1 minute. It has 16 nozzles. They have three of these. The 'lilac' coloured nozzles does a spray of 200 litre per hectare at 10 bar. The yellow ones do a high water rate of 500 litres per hectare - covering 3 hectares of apples. 80 litres of water is required at least to spray clean nozzles after a spray session. The John Deere tractor they have has 5 speeds and goes from fast - medium. He also showed me other attachments that they have like a side boom - a shrouded fourheaded boom sprayer. It is noticeable how the area around the trees go brown. But now that it is harvesting time, the areas around the trees are strimmed. These areas grow quick especially because they have irrigation set up around them, even with a 10cm deep straw mulch and 4" radius wide. The irrigation is obviously better set up before the mulch rather than after. Gerry says that drip hole rubber irrigation is better than seep holes ones - these are better for small trees. The fixed head spinner irrigation used covers a 2.3m swath on each side (approx. 4m circle), the pipes they are connected to are 38mm.
This is a messy job as there are often rotten apples all over the floor, animal faeces like those of badger's and loose rock and gravel to look out for. So generally arms and legs covered is required like wearing overalls and a helmet with wire mesh that can pulled down over the face, ear defenders (usually come with safety helmut) and extra visors underneath even with glasses. The strimmers we use are 2 stroke oil ones (Echo and Stihl are the makes they have), we always carry an extra can for topping up with us. The plastic lines with glitter bits are the best as they cut better and wears a bit slower. Usually the right type of 2 stroke oil needs to be used with the right make of machine as they create them especially for them.
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| Photo 1: Strimmer lines - special longer lasting dark plastic ones with 'glitter' bits in it. |
When you first start the strimmer you have to pump the yellow bubble (see photo below) to make sure that the oil has circulated around. Then the choke has to be on horizontal butterfly (air is stopped from going in) and switched to vertical butterfly (off - for air to go in) once engine has begun - this only has to be done the first time. Orange underneath choke cord is where the oil goes in. Handle control has to be in start mode before choke cord is pulled. We check that the head is actually spinning properly before taking the machines out onto the orchards. We have to start the machines before attaching it to our straps, which usually have a self-releasing mechanism.
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| Photo 2: Close of outer engine section of strimmer. |