Hi I'm Mark I'm the owner of Lawn Stripes and Hedges and our vision at the company is to have
a fully eco-friendly garden maintenance company. So the reason we want to be a fully sustainable
company is because the way the world's going at the moment. So everyone's just trying to
be a little bit better. So when we started the company although we went through a lot of pain
we purchased the newest battery models at the time and we kind of just stuck with it. Now
three years into the business it's just absolute paid tenfold for us it's probably the single best
decision that we've made. Cost one of them, noise second and just customer satisfaction as well so
we have used petrol and battery-powered and we feel that you get a better result from battery
mowers, cylinder mowers, strimmers, it's just an all-around better product.
Yeah so we've been using the Stirling we was lucky enough to test it from out the gate and
we've been using it for a year now. In regards to being a product it
is probably one of the best out there so we used the Liberty and it just wasn't robust enough for
us although it's a great mower for smaller lawns we needed something a little bit more stronger
so when we got the call to test the Stirling we were so grateful and I mean this lawn that
we do here we use a Stirling on this a lot and for us because we're a lawncare company as well
having the different cartridges that you can swap within seconds it's so easy because
for anyone who's in the lawncare world they know that you know whether they've got an aerator,
scarifier you know we have leave collectors to collect the debris once you've scarified.
My van now has one machine with three or four cartridges in and that does us. Obviously you
have to have a few batteries to do it but the cost of it compared to a petrol machine
although you're paying a little bit more up front the overall cost you save, after the first
12 months it pays for itself which as a company you know it's more beneficial for us to do that.
Yeah so in the pro-world I learned all my skills from Richard at Pro-Lawn care he still uses all
the petrol machines he teaches people lawncare so when I went to him and said you know I want to be
battery powered he told me it wasn't possible but I've never been the type of person to you know
if someone tells you you know it sounds corny but someone tells you it ain't possible I always look
to the future and think well surely there is and that's how the conversation come about with Austin
regarding this machine because if I can have one machine that does six different
jobs that's six different machines that I don't need in my van anymore so that's space,
it's fuel for all the machines, servicing on every machine you know. Is it perfect right now? No but
is it better than petrol? Yes 100 percent I believe it's better than petrol because
for scarifying the labour intense side of it clearing up thatch after you've scarified with
a petrol scarifier it takes you hours on a lawn like this if you was to scarify this it would
probably take us two hours to completely pull all the thatch out you know you've got to rake it up
and then then you've got to blow it and then get rid of it whereas this machine you can just take
it out of the basket and put it into the dumpy bag with a basket so from a professional stance
once you've tried it you'll never go back like I'm so happy that we we went that way because it's
just paid paid for itself within the first year for us.
The adjustable height now anyone that's had an Allett product within like the Liberty one thing
that I thought could have been better was the variable speed so if you've got your blade on
you had to walk with the same speed as the blade whereas with this you can change your speed and
it doesn't change the speed of the blade so that is amazing because you can keep the Scarifier on
obviously it's going at full pelt whereas you can wind it right back so different cartridges
need different speeds you couldn't have the scarifying cartridge and have it on full whack and
shoot through your lawn because that's not the aim of the game at the aim of the game is to pull as
much thatch out as you can so having the ability to wind it right back go at a slow pace but still
have the momentum of the blade that's brilliant being able to move it as you get in your van so
any professional knows that space is everything in your van it's like an Aladdin's cave sometimes
you try and ram that much stuff in it and if you're no good at tetris you can't get it all
in so literally one click of the button and you can move the handlebars and that's the kind of the
feature of the Stirling whereas everything's easy to use whether you're changing the
height of cut whether you're moving your handlebars whether you're moving them up and down
it's literally just a quick flick you know you can move it you know to where if you're
small like some of my members of staff you can click it in like that oh that's a bit too low
so for something on other brands or other products in the past everything's made within ease whether
you're swapping the cartridge or you know taking for instance taking the lawn rake off whether
you're going to be verticutting or scarifying it's just two bolts and it slides straight off so
just the fact that it's really easy to use is my overall key features of it really.
So today we're here to do a pretty much a full renovation on my customer's lawn
we're going to verticut it and we're going to do a light scarification as well.
So verticutting we use the verticutting cartridge to you know cut all the stolons in the grass
the grass that's growing you know sideways it promotes vertical growth, weed grasses
you know you see a little patch of them like lighter green patches in your lawn and normally
weed grasses so they love to grow out sideways so if you continually use the the verticutting
cartridge then you know they eventually just get took over by all the healthier good grasses
in your lawn. Weeds it keeps your weeds at bay as well if you if you want to stick to like a
bit of an organic approach using the verticutting cartridge at least once a month just to you know
keep them weeds being cut because with any plant it needs the sun to regenerate so if you keep
cutting them down and it can't get the energy from the sun then they just won't grow and they'll just
die off so yeah so today we're going to swap the cartridge over which takes a couple of seconds
so let's get going.
So
I'm just gonna obviously show you what we've pulled out of the lawn so as you can see you
probably can't see this pile but this pile here nice dark green so that's the clippings from when
we've cut it with the normal mowing cartridge and this is from the verticutting so the height of cut
with the verticut we cut just above soil levels. Sometimes it's a little bit hard so we we go we
go through it twice um because if there's quite a lot of weed grasses like this here
then we'll we'll go over it twice but we normally go over it we won't go over it same
way we'll cut the angle to make sure you're kind of cutting it from all different angles
so let's have a look through this pile obviously we've got here so you can see these thicker dark
leaves here you've got some weeds in there you've got some cock's foot which is weed grass which
is the thicker leaves and it also pulls out a bit of thatch as well as my dog's eating nope
so it's slightly you know some people might say well why not just use the verticutting cartridge
rather than the scarifying cartridge because it kind of does two jobs it doesn't really because
the blade cuts through the stolon stolon's is grass that kind of grows that way so a stolon
is a type of grass which like a fescue grass so rather than grow up it grows up and then it'll
have a stolon come round on its side and it crabs along the grass which is a classic feature of like
you can see the lighter patches on the lawn that have kind of that have come out you don't want
them in your lawn really because I personally don't like patchy different coloured lawns so
using the the verticutting cartridge you know keeps them really at bay. The scarifying cartridge
is designed to pull thatch out so it has like a little spring hook on it and it goes through the
soil and it pulls any kind of matter out whereas the the verticutting cartridge is designed to cut
through that so although a by-product of using the verticutting cartridge is you get a little bit of
thatch out of it they're massively two different jobs so if you know you keep doing regular
swapping the cartridges about you'll get a much much healthier lawn. Yep so a good sign that you
know you're getting you're deep enough as you can see the slots coming through the lawn so if you're
not going deep enough with the cartridge you don't get as as dominant lines so it's great as well if
you're going to be over-seeding the lawn which we are doing today if you get the verticutting
cartridge on the sweet spot it creates a little bit of a groove in the soil which when you see
the seed sits in the groove contact with the seed helps germination yeah. So if anyone's
worried about getting it onto the van I'll show you how literally how easy it is front roller
once it's in the van clip it forward twist it round and we're in.