I really like it... it is quiet, easy to push, and doesn't jar my shoulders like holding onto our gas powered mower. I think it is even easier to push and control than our self-propelled mower is! I love how it leaves the clippings right on the lawn for mulch. The only downside I found is that it is somewhat uneven on our VERY bumpy and uneven lawn. I am hoping that as we fill in the bare spots, this will go away... however, I'm not in the manicured lawn club, so I will use it even if it doesn't give a perfect clip!
I went around the hole yard with my hand weeder pulling dandilions. 56 dandilion carcasses later, I was ready to aerate the lawn with a hand aerator...
The tool (I used a Turf Hound Aerator) looks like a small pitchfork with really hefty tines. You walk across your yard, stepping down every 6 inches on the aerator. We saw marked improvement in our lawn quality and in the germination of the grass seed last fall after we did this; it seems like a great and easy way to make your lawn healthier (and thus more drought resistant).
We threw down another 3 lbs of drought resistant grass seed into the few bare areas that didn't germinate last fall... (one is in the picture above).
One lawn, prepped for summer!
12 comments:
I am SO jealous! I love that lawnmower!
I always wanted a manual push mower like that. I'm thinking my new yard is WAY too big and lumpy to use one of those, but it's so cool. :)
I use a reel mower and our yard is bumpy too. Just keep an eye on the screws, sometimes they jostle loose, but it could just be the age on my mower :)
Do you know what kind of soil you have? Ours has a lot of clay in it. I think that's why during the Spring freeze/thaw cycle the yard becomes so uneven.
You are feeding our spring fever! We are still waiting for the last of the snow to melt, but this year we plan to reduce our grass area by enough that we can trade in our small but still terrible gas mower for a hand mower. I'm still looking for one that will be lightweight and manouverable enough for me to use. I will consider the Brill. We have the same bumpy lawn problem and very compacted clay soil. How difficult was the aerator to use? I would love to try hand aerating rather that use one of the big machines.
p.s. Do you have an RSS feed? I don't see the subscribe widget on your blog. I'd like to add your blog to my Google reader subscription list.
Great blog.
Ben~ Ours is full of clay, also... I'd never thought of the freeze/thaw cycle affecting that! That would explain why it's so much worse right now!
S&N~ The Brill is pretty light... I can carry it on one arm back to the garage. It sure beats our 50 lb gas mower!
I added an RSS feed... hopefully I did it right!
s & n~ the lawn aerator is tedious and extremely boring, but gets the job done, even in my rock hard clay soil. It's not as much work as raking the lawn...
We have the same type of lawnmower, and we LOVE it - and especially love to laugh at the neighbors who seem to think we're nuts. I mean, it takes a half hour to mow our lawn! Why wouldn't we want to sprew noise & gas to save 10 minutes (less gas & repair time!) Right on!
I love it! We bought a manual push mower a few years ago and enjoyed using it each season... until we bought the "1 acre death mow job" here: http://fishfishkiss.blogspot.com/2007/07/only-6-more-days-until-we-get-have-keys.html
So now I use it on the smaller parts of our frontyard and the rest is mowed by a gas hog. sorry earth, we will try harder.
Wow! We were thinking of getting one of those too. We'll have to check it out.
We love our push mower! We haven't gotten to use it yet this season- but last summer it was so nice not to have to mess with a gas mower. It was kind of tough to use if the lawn got too long- but otherwise it was much easier than we expected!
We love our push mower too. We have an antique one some friends gave us, and it works great. We had bought a newer, lighter one first at Menards, a local large hardware store here in Minnesota. It didn't cut the grass nearly as well as the old Scotts one we now have. I'm sure some of the newer ones now are better, though. I've seen good ratings on them, at least.
We have an extremely small lawn so we bought a push mower when we first moved into our house. Well, I could barely push it at all. Our lawn is too small to build up any momentum and the blades were always getting caught in the Bermuda Grass runners. We've since switched to Marathon sod and an electric Lawn Pup. It sounds like the rotary has its fans but it wasn't for us.
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