The Stihl GTA 26 Cordless Garden Pruner
Season 1, Episode 2 - February & March 2024
Blueberry bushes need to be pruned every year. Last season, I got through about 60 bushes (about 6%) using a pair of large pruning loppers, before developing acute tendonitis in both my elbows, and deciding that the best course of action was to ignore the problem. Roll forward to Spring 2024 and with my blueberry bushes now desperately needing a haircut, I knew I needed to find a way to make the job easier. In an uncanny stroke of good fortune, my daydreaming turned into fantastically appropriate Instragram adverts for potentially useful pruning tools (thanks for listening Zuck), e.g., the Stihl GTA 26 Cordless Garden Pruner aka, a mini chainsaw. If you ever find yourself needing to prune 1,000 blueberry bushes every year, I strongly recommend that you get yourself one of these bad boys:
Image 1: the ultimate weapon of mass pruning
They cost c.£150 for the tool, a couple of batteries and a charger. Looking like an incredibly enthusiastic gardener is just part of the package. With my new Stihl GTA 26 Cordless Garden Pruner, pruning efficiencies are through the roof. As of early April 2024, I had pruned about c.350 bushes (c.35% of the total) in about 30 hours (see evidence of manic pruning in Image 2, below). @Stihl-UK, if you want to sponsor this enormously successful newsletter (I have 49 readers at last count), you know where I am.
Image 2: I’m a blueberry-bush pruning maniac and I need a bigger trailer
While pruning blueberry bushes like an under-utilised extra from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I was becoming increasingly aware that with every day that passed, the grass and weeds were getting closer and closer to springing into life again. You may not be aware, but if you leave a field of blueberry bushes, unattended, i.e. with no grass cut or maintenance work performed, for the month of May, it will in fact disappear. I learned that lesson the hard way last year. It truly was the stuff of nightmares.
Image 3: part time blueberry farmer trying to locate his blueberry bushes (June 2023)
This year, my answer to the weed problem is wood chip, and lots of it. My girlfriend doesn’t know exactly how much I spent on wood chip (we’re saving to get a flat together), but if anyone has always wondered what £1,200 worth of fresh pine wood chip looks like, then wonder no more:
Image 4: my “bloody hell, how much wood chip is this?” moment
If you look really closely you can actually see the reflection of a worried looking man in the gleaming metal side of the lorry; it’s the face of someone who thinks they may have overspent on wood-chip. That person is me.
So while I may have ordered slightly more wood chip than I initially thought, the important thing is that I have an extremely large pile of weed suppressing material and it was delivered in this epic four wheel drive lorry. It briefly crossed my mind that I could do with a nice four wheel drive lorry to cart away the branches from my blueberry pruning (trailer in Image 2 is far too small, really), but after blowing the budget for FY 2024/2025 in one enormous pile of wood chip, I vetoed myself immediately.
Image 5: the new blueberry pruning lorry (unfortunately not the case)
So, on the 2nd of April, 39 cubic metres of wood chip was delivered. On the 3rd of April, something even more magnificent rocked the the blueberry enterprise to its core. Charlie arrived.