Manly mower vs flyweight flymo?

[Crofter]

My back garden is a PITA to mow. Very steep and undulating. I have tried tackling it with my normal cheap petrol mower, but just getting the thing up the banking feels like enough work for one afternoon. I could strim it all and put up with the unevenness and have to go around raking uo the grass.

Would a flymo be a terrible idea? I do treat mowing the lawn as one of these things that should be done as little as possible because life is too short. So it is always like a jungle when I finally get around to it.

 

Last year, I avoided the problem entirely and bought half a dozen geese

[ToughButterCup]

Grass was invented by some fiend to control men. In my life I've only ever seen one woman mowing a lawn, and one woman mowing a field.

Keep the geese, dodge the poo. Save the money.

[ProDave]

You live on a croft. Shouldn't you have sheep?

[PeterW]

Petrol Flymo are awesome....

[reddal]

39 minutes ago, ProDave said:

You live on a croft. Shouldn't you have sheep?

I recommend goats. Sheep can be a bit fussy about some weeds etc - but goats will eat just about anything as far as I can tell. Put a couple of goats in your garden and within weeks the whole thing will be perfectly mowed all year around,

[Crofter]

The geese are no more, and very tasty they were too! 2016 is the year of the bairn and the build, so we don't actually have any stock of our own at the moment. I could borrow some of the sheep which are on the croft (they belong to the neighbour) but moving them would be more hassle than just getting the mower out.

 

 Too many fencing projects before we can get stocked up, so the croft itself is on the back burner. I have tried to gently persuade SWMBO that it could be her wee project, but apparently babies need lots of time. Who knew?

[Onoff]

Driving along the other day past a house VERY steep and high grass bank that meets the road and I was momentarily shocked to see a Flymo coming down then going back up the slope. At the top of the slope leaning back and digging his heels in was a bloke in shorts who could barely keep a footing on the bank. He'd tied a rope to the Flymo.....

Must be about due for another cut. Next time I'll stop and take a pic. Just imagining having dash cam footage as the mower enters the picture from left and skids across the bonnet.....

[Construction Channel]

have you considered buying a mini digger?

 

[Stones]

I've seen the rope / flymo trick used before on very steep bankings.  Looked like seriously hard work.

My main aim in planning my landscaping is that it has to be either very easy to maintain (so flat or gentle slopes I can cut with the ride on mower) or suitable for fencing off for livestock grazing.

[Construction Channel]

my plan is for a circle of grass in the middle, then attach a self propelled mower to a steak in the middle via a rope. 

i should be able to get the fuel right by the 3rd or 4th attempt

...........and i am being quite serious 

[Crofter]

20 minutes ago, Stones said:

I've seen the rope / flymo trick used before on very steep bankings.  Looked like seriously hard work.

My main aim in planning my landscaping is that it has to be either very easy to maintain (so flat or gentle slopes I can cut with the ride on mower) or suitable for fencing off for livestock grazing.

Yeah but you're cheating, your island is *much* flatter than mine!

[Crofter]

17 minutes ago, Construction Channel said:

my plan is for a circle of grass in the middle, then attach a self propelled mower to a steak in the middle via a rope. 

i should be able to get the fuel right by the 3rd or 4th attempt

...........and i am being quite serious 

Or leave the steak attached to the cow and problem solved.

This thread is starting to go round in circles...

[ProDave]

I have one rule in our new house. SWMBO is NOT going to plant any trees shrubs or "flower beds" in the middle of the LAWN.  It needs to be one unobstructed area that you can push (or ride) a mower up and down, without having to go around "things"

[Onoff]

In the back garden we have a circle (more of an oval) of cowslips that just gets mown around and the grass left to grow and do it's thing. Saved a big slow worm the other day from the wife driving the ride on. She was mowing in ever decreasing circles on the front lawn and when she'd passed it made a "run" for it.

[Crofter]

I'm sure I heard somewhere that farmers are encouraged/incentivised to cut crops in such a way that they leave an escape route for any beasties living amongst it- so start at one end and work in rows, rather than cutting the perimeter first.

[Construction Channel]

I've never heard that one, 

I assume these would be organic crops?

 

[Onoff]

My South African mate reckons tractors with glazed / meshed cabs are a must out there if grass has been left to grow or fallow land needs ploughing in. His brother has a farm out there. Seemingly the cutting heads etc can throw up poisonous SNAKES and/or bits of them still capable of biting.

And apparently you should never run a snake over whilst on a motorbike for similar reasons..... 

[AliG]

I used to have the largest Flymo with grass box. It was a pain as it got very heavy and hard to manoeuvre as the grass box filled up. I realised that a cheap wheeled electric mower was probably a better bet. Ultimately I think wheels beat air for ease of movement.

I then moved on to Bosch Rotak cordless mower. It made a massive difference, you can mow in half the time without a cable, obviously a petrol mower has this advantage, but this is also quieter, lighter and doesn't require trips to get petrol. However, it was somewhat down on power versus a corded mower and so if you left the grass more than two weeks and it was long, thick and wet it would struggle.

It was probably good for an area up to 250sq metres. The battery did give out after a couple of years and they aren't cheap to replace.

Thus i would recommend cordless if you have a modest sized lawn and cut it regularly.

In the end I decided that over the years I have spent so much on gadgets that it wasn't much more expensive to pay someone to cut the grass and they never miss a cut so it is always tidy.

[Crofter]

Thanks for that, and welcome to the forum!

Looks like a flymo is not the panacea I was hoping for. Will just have to wait until my son is old enough to lift the strimmer, hmmm that will be about 12 years or so

[gravelld]

Anyone used a robot lawnmower? I'm tempted.

[Jeremy Harris]

I was adamant we weren't going to have any lawn at the new house, but SWMBO put her foot down.  I agreed, on the one absolute condition, that I would buy her a light and easy to use cordless mower and SHE would mow it.  I duly went and got a Makita cordless mower (handy, as it uses the same lithium battery packs as all my tools, so I could buy just a bare unit).  Madam approved, it's very light, dead easy to use etc.  How often has she cut the grass?  About 3 I think, the other dozen or so cuts so far have been me.  I've even dropped hints that "the grass could do with being cut" and they fall on deaf ears, so I end up having to do it, again.

I HATE cutting grass, and gardening in general.  If I'd had a choice the small garden would just have been gravel over weed membrane, perhaps with a few pot plants.............

As it needs cutting now, and as it's going to rain later, I suppose I'd better go and cut it AGAIN.

PS: The Makita cordless mower is nice and light and ideal for a small bit of fairly well-kept grass.  Expensive, even as a bare machine, but when I bought it I thought the price was worth paying if it meant I didn't need to drag the old petrol mower out to cut the grass.

[Stones]

I often found it amusing how many weedkiller attacks were perpetrated against gardens owned by people, who didn't like gardening.  You never know,  your grass could be the next victim...

[ProDave]

I don't mind cutting the grass, it's the MOSS that bugs me. How do you keep a lawn moss free when you have very wet poor ground?  Yes I can do it often with the elecrtic lawn rake, but that's even worse than mowing and you should see the amount of moss it drags out.

[DavidWright]

18 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I don't mind cutting the grass, it's the MOSS that bugs me. How do you keep a lawn moss free when you have very wet poor ground?  Yes I can do it often with the elecrtic lawn rake, but that's even worse than mowing and you should see the amount of moss it drags out.

We have places where we have grass in our moss, not the other way round... Good job I rather like moss.

For the rest, a few years ago I purchased an Austrian scythe, since when I haven't used either the mower or the strimmer.

I'd only expected to use it on the docks, etc. but I found that on our ground (nowhere is flat or level) the scythe is a much better option all round. Easy start, no noise (aside from a slight 'swish'), and my knees are much happier with it (they'd ache for a couple of days after using the mower or strimmer to fight the grass on our rough ground). I started off with a 'ditch' blade. In the second year I got a fine grass blade too & with that I keep one patch of the grass closer cropped that I'd imagined possible at first.

For more about Austrian scythes see: http://thescytheshop.co.uk/

 

 

 

[Crofter]

Nice to see you on here, David. Maybe if I pop down to Elgol you could give me a wee demo of the scythe? I am hoping to go to the gala day actually so perhaps I'll bump into you.