TAKE ONE April, 2017
Gardener News Serving the Agricultural, Gardening and Landscaping Communities GARDENERNEWS.COM
TAKE ONE No. 168
Power Equipment with No Gas, No Cord and No Emissions By Tom Castronovo Executive Editor
Tom Castronovo/Photos
Doug Petersen, left, holds a Stihl BGA 85 battery-powered handheld blower, while his brother Keith wears a Stihl BGA 100 battery-powered backpack blower in their family’s power equipment dealership, The Eardly T. Petersen Company in Westfield, Union County, N.J.
As a kid, I remember cutting my grandmother’s lawn with a push reel mower. The grass clippings fell right back into the lawn. The fancier ones had cloth bags on the back to catch the clippings. I clipped the hedges with hand-held, long-handled shears. I trimmed the lawn edges on my knees with small hand held shears. I raked the leaves. There was almost no noise associated with my chores. It also took forever to complete my chores. I could easily hear the call for lunch and dinner. A few years later, I used electric shears for the hedge trimming, a small hand-held, re-chargeable battery operated grass shear to trim the lawn edges and an electric mower to cut the lawn. The cord always got in the way. I remember being scared to run over the cord with the possibility of getting electrocuted. I swept the sidewalk, the curb and driveway with a broom. Very time consuming. Those were the days. I don’t even want to talk about the electric line trimmer, or more commonly known as a weed whacker. All I can tell you is I used a lot of black electrical tape. As time went on and I got older, the lawn and garden chores got easier with the advancement of technology. Soon I was cutting grass with a gasoline-operated mower and cleaning up with (Continued on page 24)