Thursday, June 18, 2009

Reel Mower - Gas Free Lawn Care

Well summer is now in full swing and we have decided to give green lawn care a try. We've used corn gluten as weed control and other all natural products in our yard and garden. Now we are giving the old fashioned push mower a try. Some of our neighbors have gas and man-powered reel mowers already and we wanted to try it out. Jon always wanted to be able to mow the grass and not wake up our kids while they nap.

I really like our new reel mower we purchased from ecomowers.com They had a great deal on our model and offered free shipping. We purchased a Sun Lawn LMM 40 reel mower since it was one of the few mowers that can tackle bermuda grass. It weighs about 17 lbs. so I can carry it no problem, has nearly a 16" cutting swath, and mows the grass as low as 0.4 " to 2.2" high. There is an optional grass catcher attachment you can get and collect your clippings for composting. I really like how easy it is to push and Matthew loves holding the lower handle and pushing it too. I love that I can now mow the lawn and not have to wait for Jon to do it. Sometimes he travels for work and I am forced to do the the yard work. I can not operate the gas powered mower, but with our new reel mower it's a breeze. The only problem we have had is that we use pine bark mulch in our landscaping and that will stop the blade from spinning so you have to keep your lawn mulch free. Another issue is an unlevel lawn can also stop the blades. We sanded our lawn for the first time this spring and that seems to help with the uneven lawn. I think if we sand again next spring our mowing will be smooth sailing.

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