Kitchen Garden Forum

We’re just starting out in our allotment journey - our plot was used until around 6 months ago, so several fenced areas with grasses growing need clearing as well as moderate nettle growth around the edge of the plot (very few brambles). Would we be better investing in a petrol or battery strimmer? And what to look out for? Cheers!

Welcome to the forum NG, this question has come up on the forum a few times now and it’s quite a tricky question to answer!
Unless you go for a top quality, expensive battery strimmer, they will only strim light new growth, what is fine if you can strim on a very regular basis but if it gets long and tough, you will be fighting a losing battle and the strimmer will soon be worn out!
Petrol strimmers will keep most longish grass or weeds under control but, if these are allowed to get really long or tough, the smaller petrol strimmers will struggle.
The cheaper the petrol strimmer, the heavier they seem to be, so it might pay to have a look at a few to see what you think!
There is one more problem with petrol ones and that is the petrol going stale and gumming the carb up…but you can buy a special ready mixed 2 Stroke petrol, that will last for several years, whether left in the strimmer, or container.
Hope that helps a little and doesn’t seem too confusing.

And I meant to say, I hope your allotment journey turns out to be as good as mine one has been…..they can become a little addictive….

I got fed up with 2-stroke strimmers becoming hard to start or even failing and the warranties aren't worth anything, they just say "you must have been using the wrong mixture". I have had a cheap 4-stroke that also has a disc / brushcut option for the tougher stuff that has lasted quite well.

I had a battery one for a while but it didn’t cope well with anything other than small weeds and it also ran out of power after only a short time. I then bought a second hand 2 stroke one off Gumtree which I found great and it was far superior to the battery one.

Strimmers and shredders both require a lot of oomph and despite improvements in battery technology are still better when they are petrol powered.

I have a DeWalt battery strimmer. 2*5Ahr batteries is sufficient to strim the grass off from paths etc around the plot. I think I'm agreeing with OH that it is fine for maintaining, but not for clearing a long neglected plot. That's probably more a brush cutter job, with a proper blade not a nylon line.

The battery strimmer have the advantage that it is much quieter, and less smelly than a petrol one, hence much more considerate of your neighbours' tranquility.