Scarifying at Shuttleworth

Today Tom introduced us to the Stihl scarifier. We learnt that this machine is good to remove unwanted vegetation from a lawn such as moss, and dead grass, this gives a chance for the healthy grass to get more air and light and aid healthy new grown.

Stihl scarifier

Ready to scarify the first line

The scarifier has six height settings, one being the highest and six being the lowest. This sets the spinning blades at the bottom of the machine to be, either, on the surface of the lawn or cut deeper into the turf.

Rear view of the scarifying blades

We each took it in turn to scarify the lawn, each of us scarified a line using different height settings to see what effect these had on the grass.

Six scarified lines 6-1 from left to right

Visible scarified lines

After we had complete the task we assessed that the highest setting was too high and the lowest was too low, and that setting four looked about right for this application.

We then cleaned the machine out from all the build up of grass and soil.

Some of the scarified lawn from line six

The waste after the scarifier was cleaned out