Which lawn looks best to you?

Geo-TH,In

Well-known Member
I have a tenant who mows once a week. He think the shorter the grass the better. He cuts with a ZTR butcher mower. His yard look so bad he even cut it twice yesterday.

I mow about every 2 weeks at 3 inches with my Jubilee and a 72 inch woods RM660.

Neither yard has been raked or bagged. I just cut this morning. Tenant cut yesterday morning.

Which yard looks best to you?

If you can't figure out which yard is mine look for the ribbed front tire.
George
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Your lawn looks great. There must be something wrong with his machine dull blades or deck dirty with build up . I just mowed mine (4 inches tall) with a Craftsman garden tractor with 50" deck and it looks like yours.
 
In ohio this year every two weeks you could bale it up ! We have had a lot of rain. That Ford would have my yard with deep ruts too !!!! This spring it was so wet I was using a self propelled push mower and leaving ruts and even foot prints !

Your yard does look a lot better. Now fire that rig up and go do his. LOL
 
His mower isn't spreading the clippings, it's just chunking them out. I'll vote for the job your mower does hands down.

My son bought a used Deutz-Allis garden tractor type mower and I don't know the model, but it distributes the cut grass more even than anything I've seen. No chunks or clumps, just a nice even layer of cut grass that's not ground up. If he cut off three inches, the cut grass is in three inch long pieces and spread out near perfect.

In these parts this summer the lawns have to be mowed every week. I'm looking out the window at a lawn that was mowed a week ago and is probably 5" now. It's raining too much to get a good whack at it today or I'd be out there mowing.
 
I don't like excessive clippings on my yard either, so if the grass is very tall I divide the yard into sections and throw the clippings "in" where the next pass will clip them again. I then make a few extra trips over the yard and windrow the clippings, then rake and haul them off.
 
I keep my blades sharp, cut at 3 inches, not even with the roots.

I have two 72 inch woods. One on a Jubilee and one on a IH C. The Jubilee is rear mount, IH C is belly. I love the finish I get and I only mow every 2 weeks. The RM660 is a 540 PTO mower which means 1500 engine RPM's. I make the mower blades sing running the engine at 1800 RPM's.

It took me 40 minutes to cut an acre today. Then a few more minutes to do the trim work on a 48 inch rider.
 
I solved that problem years ago with a 5 ft 4650 pound lawn roller. I can also add 250 gallons to my roller. I use it empty. NO RUTS. Takes a farm tractor to use my roller.
 
Here is my idea of a lawn mower that can handle the big jobs when a tenant leaves me a mess.
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Your yard looks much better than your neighbors.

I agree with you that sharp blades make a lot of difference.

Mowing the yard with <a href="http://youtu.be/iTZ_XaSVtfI?list=UU4gFuJx6qHbiK0FRREh2lDw">a small tractor and finishing mower</a> also works for us.
 
Blades is only half the story. You can't expect to cut grass at ground level, you have to leave room for the grass clippings to go. I cut my grass at the highest setting on my 48 inch husky, 3+ inches.

Neighbor's yard across the street looks the same. He mowes it every week if not sooner at ground level with a ZTR. He doesn't bag his either.

I think the taller the grass, the deeper the roots. If you want to shave your yard, better bag it. I have no bagger on my 72 inch woods and I only mow every 2-3 weeks.

Hope people on YT see that old school mowers can really do a good job.
 
The best looking grass is the grass I don't have to mow!

I've got a wood RM59. Love it. As long as the blades are sharp it does a nice job. Going to that over a Wheel Horse with a 42 inch deck cut 2 hours off my mowing time and reduced fuel consumption by about 2 gallons.


Guess I have to be honest, your looks great.....and I didn't have to mow it!!

Rick
 
I see the same thing, we just had out rainy season, in july and august and the grass in town went nuts the lawn boys cut this 2 foot tall grass low and the whole lawn looks like a goat puked all over it, the larger area I cut with my 49 cub I left about 6 inches and then hit it again about 4 and it looks great, a little clipping residue but not much, does anybody know if a finish mower with a wide rear discharge will make a mess like one with side discharge? thinking about one for my jubilee so I can use that one too
 
eric,
I put a 72 inch woods belly mower off an IH H on my IH C. It was basically a corn stock chopper. It would discharge out the back and both sides.

I took mower off tractor, flipped it over and converted to a left side discharge finish mower by attaching metal on the rear of blade path about 3/4 inch away from blades and 1 inch below blades. I like the way it works, especially when mulching leafs. Does a better job mowing too. I got the idea of adding metal by looking at how the RM660 is designed.
 
Well, maybe not as pretty as yours, BUT haven't had to cut it in 2+ months and it will 'bounce back' . On our own well and don't waste the stuff on grass. 10 mos. of the year it looks like a fairway.
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Around my area it is recomended at 2 1/2" for most conditions. Scalping is not good on the grass stand and will eventually kill it.
 
As a side note we have 3-2000gal (black plastic) storage tanks for water. Refreshed and cleaned every year (at 'high tide'-rainy season), and am working on the 2nd one now. Just don't waste water on growing a mostly useless lawn, also, other than the servicing (I do it myself) don't pay for it in taxes. P.S. the 'Jones' are NOT any kind of an issue - poop on them !
 
My neighbor used to use a JD M with belly mower. You can always tell the sound of an old johnny popper. The old man is gone. I tried to get the old JD, but his kids wanted it.
 
Its true the height of grass equals the depth of root grab a shovel and check it out.my grass looks and lasts longer in a year then neighbors .but i dont really cut the grass simply toss up a hot wire add calves for a day or two then calves out and hot wire out.it surprised me on the job they do i had weeds i couldnt control (wild cucumber on trees chokeing them) the weeds are gone and surprising very little fertilizer left i level off and square things up maybe once a month . got 2 neighbors copying me now and the best part in two years my lawn will be a steak on the table
 
You said it! Why burn 3.50 gas when you can convert that grass to food. I do the same thing and cows mow, trim weeds and fertilize in one operation. I crank the mower two or three times a year to even it out.

Neighbors down the road break out the mower any time the grass is over 1/2 inch tall. Neighbor on the other side has proverbial 10 acres and house. Spends half of every weekend mowing and watering. Why by 10 acres just to mow it? Huge waste of resources.
 
Your grass looks good, George. But I can assure you that after I cut mine with my zero turn it does not look like your neighbor's.
 
Mark,
You are right ZTR's aren't the problem. It the mind set that all my neighbors who own ZTR's have. They think they have to scalp their grass. All their yards look like this. This guy is a back and forth mower putting the clippings in a wind row. The dead grass you see has been there for weeks. He even mowed the clipping twice trying to make them go away. None of my neighbors bag, they just scalp. Run the blades in the dirt. Blades will dull faster. All their yards look all the same, like crap.

One evening I watched my daugher mow with my 48 inch rider. It was late, almost dark. The ground was dry. I have always cut my lawn at 3 inches or as high as the mower will go. That night I saw sparks coming off the mower blades. Blades were sucking up the sand and sand blasting the blades. It's no wonder blades dull faster when you are cutting 1 inch.

Some day I'll get someone to turn my pto while I count the revolutions of my blades. I run my 540 pto closer to 650 rpm. I'll bet the tip velocity of my 2 ft blades comes close to or exceeds any ZTR on the market, around 200 mph. The clippings that come out of my RM660 easily go 8 ft, if not more. I keep chopping the clipping up and there isn't much left when I'm done. If there is, I'll let the hay dry a day and pick up with my 48 inch husqvarna.

My post is about yesterdays tractors and I think yesterdays mowers are the best.

If you think your mower does a better job, please post a pic 3 days after you mow. You can see the problem that my neighbors, who use lawn mowers and ZTR have 3 days after they mow. Their fat front wheels bend the grass over, mower doesn't pick grass up, so 3 days later, usually after a rain too, the bent over grass stands up and you see its taller than the grass that was cut. Perhaps that's why my neighbors scalp their grass.

I still love my old tractors and so does my broken back. All my neighbors tell me how much their ZTR's hurt them, but they still use them.
george
 
Mower does a nice job, have considered one given the size of what needs to be cut here.

I think your music credit may be off though......(don't ask why I notice these things LOL!, I've stopped trying to figure out that for years LOL !)

It should be "Centerfield" by John Fogerty, however, good choice! I really liked "The Old Man Down The Road" off that one, was really cool when that album was released, seeing CCR was defunct and Mr Fogerty had taken 10 years off.
 

I used to mow with a regular mower, haying season I never got around to it during daylight hours. Finally I set up pens, outer lawn gets grazed by a couple older cows I don't turn out to pasture once in a while, inner one I run a string wheel trimmer over once in a while. That takes about 20 minutes, not much longer than my rider would. Outer outer lawn I'll run over with either the 9' or double 7' mower depending which is hooked up. It's good enough for me, very few people see it anyway, and it doesn't look bad.
 
big tractors and finish mowers do a nice job.
Funny about grass too.
Mowing the acre around the house with a regular riding mower looks good, but I mow my much larger open side yard with a rear finish mower behind whatever..
Side yard, I have the finish mower set pretty high because of the thick clover and occasional rock, dunno 5-6".
Mowed once a week with the rest of the lawn.
When visitors are over there they always comment on how good it looks, and they are surprised when they walk thru it and
it is up to their ankles.
Fresh, evenly mowed often, will fool ya.
 
I'm with you, taller is better to look at and
better for the grass. This summer is better than
the past 4 summers that have been so dry.

For years, I hired kids to use my 48 inch rider
to mow my yard. They had a key to garage, so they
mowed it when they could. Even my daughter mowed
my grass until she got out college.

Then I bought farm tractors, enjoy mowing again.
I have to go very slow when doing the trim work
on rider or my back will pay the price. Pain meds
and no sleep for a night or two. The only pain I
have mowing with a tractor is my face hurts. I'm
smiling too hard driving yesterdays tractors.
 

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