Ride on mowers, any advice.

Possibly looking to get ride on mower, big but not huge garden and needs to be able to fit through archway to get to front of house as well. Thinking of getting mulching plug to avoid having lots of grass to get rid of.

I’ll have a word with my gardener chap, see what he weckamendth

Do you need that much lawn? I appreciate you might need an area for kids to play but is it possible to have a bit more natural area, more meadow-like? Much better for wildlife and looks more interesting. Less maintenance too.

+1 for making part, if not all into a wildflower meadow

If you must get one then avoid Viking/stihl. Get something with a Briggs and Stratton or Honda engine and the largest collection box/hopper that you can afford/will fit through your archway

If you’ve got kids, you won’t have to mow the lawn again. Work colleague got one and his son who would never mow the lawn previously suddenly was offering to do it.

Stirling Moss once won the lawnmower racing champion and Derek Bell the 24hr lawnmower race.
Not helpful to the op but I like these facts

I’ve got a Lawnflite ride on mower with a Briggs & Stratton engine I bought second hand 6 years ago from the previous owner of our house. It was already oldish then. It gets used to mow a very rough paddock of just less than an acre but which is covered in old mole hills, dips and banks.

It just about copes with this but I could do with something a bit beefier. It would be ideal for a large lawned area though.

Slight hijack (soz) can anyone recommend one for rougher use?

Since I’ve had it it’s had a new starter solenoid, battery, carburettor and had the chassis welded. I service it myself it’s pretty straightforward.

Regarding suggestions above to have a wildflower meadow as a low maintenance option, we looked into it and is isn’t very low maintenance if you do it properly. Any idea that you can chuck a few bags of wildflower seed on it and forget about it will likely result in a bramble filled mess in short order. You also need quite poor, impoverished soil for it to work well.

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If you’ve got kids, you won’t have to mow the lawn again. Work colleague got one and his son who would never mow the lawn previously suddenly was offering to do it.

Wont have to mow the lawn once. Been there and done that.

Whatever you buy, get it local from someone who also services & repairs (and will pick up).

But do you really need a ride-on – what have you at the moment?

FWIW we’ve about 1/3 acre of grass, but it’s got a lot of slope and I use a petrol self-propelled mower.

But do you really need a ride-on

Every self respecting bloke needs a ride on mower, most of us have neither the lawn or storage space to get one. Doesn’t stop us needing one. Its like cooking on fire and burping loudly, its a primeval need.

(aware of casual sexism in this statement, I am sure lots of other gender identities also need a sit on mower)

Garden has plenty of hedges and trees and border bits for wildlife, currently got man who comes round and cuts the grass. It’s not huge but big enough that would be hard work with normal mower.
Kids still bit young for it but will be good going forward.

This all depends on how much space you’ve got.
If it’s just a big lawn then a wildflower “meadow” sounds lovely but they tend to look nice for a very short period and then just an overgrown mess the rest of the time – they do need some attention (and planting in the first place!)

Re mowers: I started off with a s/h Hayter that was was actually a rebadged Countax. It was pretty good, and the Kohler engine was reliable. But the mower started falling apart and could only deal with the lawn and not the paddocks we have and keep cut (about 2 acres).

Slight hijack (soz) can anyone recommend one for rougher use?

I came into some money so I went nuts and bought a used commercial John Deere with a 24hp diesel engine, shaft driven deck and power steering.
It cost a fortune (£4.5k from a dealer) but it’s been pretty much faultless

Although it’s a large amount of money they are still selling for the same as I paid 7 years ago!!
Additionally it’s proper multi-purpose as I have a big sprayer that goes on the back and a loader on the front which has been an absolute godsend.
Power steering is a gamechanger!

I do have a mulching kit for the deck but haven’t used it since picking up a powered collector system for less than £200 off eBay.
Mulching kits are fine but you need the grass to be nice and dry and not long for them to stand a chance of working. So they’re not a year-round solution IMO.

Every self respecting bloke needs a ride on mower, most of us have neither the lawn or storage space to get one.

I see this americanism alot particularly with powertools. Engines and motors are for the weak and feeble. A self respecting human would recognise that. In order of respect earned

Flock of sheep or other grazing livestock
Scythe
Push mower
Powered mower
Self propelled mower
Lazy bastard mower.

^ I now have the mower envy.

We’ve got about an acre in France.We usually go there about 4 times a year (pre-covid) and the grass (meadow) has often got fairly long between visits. We’ve got a smallish John Deere, no grass collector and we just let it mulch. That’s quite fitting for the sort of garden it is.

I’m always surpised how well the mower cuts. We’ve had it about 10 years and I regularly service the basics.

For that size of garden a ride on Flymo should be pretty much perfect

As an alternative to cutting, the lawns at little Sparta are pretty inspiring I think.

Every self respecting bloke needs a ride on mower, most of us have neither the lawn or storage space to get one. Doesn’t stop us needing one. Its like cooking on fire and burping loudly, its a primeval need.

My wife suggested I get a ride-on as it takes me about 2 hours to cut our grass – about 3 miles on Strava 🙂

I retorted that doesn’t she think I’d have bought one already if I thought it would make my life easier / more fun.

It’s under an acre but my experience of normal law mowering is not good, it’s a boring and thankless task as the grass keeps on growing. It’s big enough to justify ride on and if you’re going to have to repeatedly do a task you might as well make it fun.

^ I now have the house in France envy.

Interested on the comments about changing to a wild flower meadow and whether anyone has tried this. I thought lawns were too fertile and the grass simple takes over everything even if you try some planting/seeding at the beginning.

I was that son who happily mowed the grass, until I drove the mower partially through the greenhouse. I was lucky, the greenhouse, less so. Turning circle is the big issue as far as I can see, less easy to get nice tidy stripes.

Like blokuptheroad earlier in the thread I also bought a 2nd hand Lawnflite mower a few years ago. It was OK and did the job for a few years but I was having to spend more and more time on it to keep it going. Eventually it properly broke down so I bought a new Mountfield 1640H which I’ve had for a couple of years with no issues. It came with a mulch plug which I alternate with collecting the grass. Collecting it makes the lawn look better IMO.

Considering one of the smaller Mountfields as needs to fit through gap in wall to do bit of grass at the front.

I thought lawns were too fertile and the grass simple takes over everything

You think right.
Just leaving grass to grow doesn’t get you a wildflower patch, it gets you a patch of long crappy looking grass.

To get the former I believe you need to spray off the grass, plough/dig over and sow a meadow seed that’s not got much grass in.
But you still only get flowers for a short time.
Fertile soil is not good for a
WFM.
The best we did with the big paddock was to mow a path curly through it early in the season but leave the rest to grow. Nice for walking the dogs.
It only lasts until July’ish though as I let a farmer cut/bail/take it.

We’ve certainly not done any of that. The grass does fight pretty hard but there are plenty of small flowers tucked in there in our patch. Dozens of different species. We get quite a few bigger things too throughout the warmer seasons. The brambles do try a get in but that is manageable.

View post on imgur.com

Buy one, put a supercharged V6 in it, have fun

We’ve certainly not done any of that.

Yep OK, well I was only talking about rather larger scale I think!
(see below)

The best we did with the big paddock was to mow a path curly through it early in the season but leave the rest to grow. Nice for walking the dogs.

Like this

(aware of casual sexism in this statement, I am sure lots of other gender identities also need a sit on mower)

Daughter #2 would agree

Husqvarna Automower FTW… ok, so it doesn’t satisfy the primal urge for a ride-on but it frees up a lot of extra time for riding your bike! Mine replaced a Kubota ride on with 5ft deck, so don’t underestimate the size and difficulty of garden that it can tackle. + My lawn has never looked better.

Husqvarna Automower FTW… ok, so it doesn’t satisfy the primal urge for a ride-on but it frees up a lot of extra time for riding your bike! Mine replaced a Kubota ride on with 5ft deck, so don’t underestimate the size and difficulty of garden that it can tackle. + My lawn has never looked better.

Shit good point.

Robot servants
Flock of sheep or other grazing livestock
Scythe
Push mower
Powered mower
Self propelled mower
Lazy bastard mower.

Not a lot of advice for the OP, but

@blokeuptheroad -have a look at Etesias, used them through work and there aren’t many things or places they won’t mow and are light enough to lift the right way up if you find their limit. No grass collector and not for croquet lawns, but for making grass shorter.

For those wanting wildflower, you ultimately need to reduce the nutrients in the soil, so mow and remove cuttings at end of summer and look for seed mixes with yellow rattle but avoid those with clover. You can strip turf and topsoil, but depends how invasive you want to be. Better to have patience I think, but then my garden is starting from a pretty feral state.

Get the biggest one that you can store and get into the areas you need. Bigger they are the less passes it takes to finish the job.
If you have trees and other things to go around a zero turn will make the extra expense seem worthwhile.
Local support, parts break and they do need servicing. You either need to be happy DIY or have someone who will pick it up.
Mulching setup is recommended but be aware the grass needs to be reasonably short and most importantly dry.
If you are paddock bashing then fold back blades are desirable.

Re mulching – I use a self propelled machine that mulches. I started with a load of grass, now have a load of weeds and grass, I’m not sure if the mulching has helped cause the problem.

And for mulching to work and not leave piles of grass, as has been said above the grass has to be very short to start with.

I wish my current garden was big enough to justify a ride on

@timber thanks, I’ll take a look 👍

Husqvarna Automower FTW

We have a place by the sea that shares a back lawn with 4 other houses (well, our is separated from the others by a post a rail fence) but other than that it’s completely open.
We each pay a local guy about £400/year to cut the grass.
I’d bloody love an automower!!!
The other houses are rented so the owners are not there very much so it’s not really feasible for us to do it ourselves.
The only issue is that we also have a small field attached to the gardens that’s pretty rough (only mowed twice a year max) and it’s pretty lumpy.
Total area is half an acre.

Full STW in the first few replies!

OP: Anyone recommend a mower?

Reply #2: You don’t need that much grass.

Never fails to amuse me.

I have a Countax collector ride on mower – it does stripes which is great, but can be tricky to get a nice stripey lawn due to the turning circle at each end, so I do tend to use it a few times per year for the lawn and every few weeks on the paddock (just to keep it down – having let it go before and see it turn into an impenetrable mess).

Also have a smaller mower as sometimes it’s nice to spend a bit more time getting a better finish.

Ride on mowers don’t always give the best finish, especially if the ground is uneven, but they do take the effort out.

(FWIW I bought it 2nd hand – about 8-10 years old but everything works fine, just need to look after belts etc)