Strimming

Wednesday means its time to look at my understanding of a horticultural word or term. This week I am looking at strimming.

Strimming

This word is one a use almost weekly on the podcast and while it may be self-explanatory, the podcast goes out all over the world and other countries may use another term.

Strimming is a weekly task on the allotment from this time of year till about the end of November. I use my petrol powered string line trimmer to chop down long grass and weeds much like a mower. The reason I use a string line trimmer on the allotment over a mower is simply for portability. It's much easier to transport a strimmer to the allotment rather than a mower.

This can be called weed whacking, weed eating, weed whipping, whipper snipping or line trimming.

The line trimmer was invented in the 1970s after George ballas from Houston, Texas USA, conceived of the idea after watching the brushes on a car wash. His first prototype used fishing line to act as the string.

A strimmer works by spinning a plastic coed so fast that it stiffens up by centrifugal force. This enables the cord to slice through grass and other vegetative material pretty effortlessly although once we get into brambles and vegetation that is tougher I like to use a brush cutter which is basically the same as a strimmer except it has a spinning blade head on it.

What do you use a strimmer for? let me know in the comments.

Don't forget to join me in my weekly podcast telling the tales of my vegetable growing journey. Podcast available every monday.