As I now am the proud owner of a lawn for the first time in my life, I find myself having a similar question to jackdavinci: namely, is a reel lawnmower right for me? So any more feedback out there? Any stories of folks that gave this a try for the 2011 season and had it work out? Total disasters?
The grass is (at least for now!) healthy and vibrant, with not much for thick weeds. The yard is flat and even, no hills or rough patches to worry about. We do have a couple of dogwood trees in the front and one large black walnut in the back (with associated dropping of large fruit). The grass-covered portions are also not very big–in my lawn-mowing-for-hire youth, I would probably figure 15 minutes or so with a 22" gas powered mower.
The no-emissions aspect of the reel mower appeals to me–and I’m certainly not opposed to the additional physical labor required–but would I end up wishing I got an electric (or small gasoline) mower instead?
(And jackdavinci… how did your situation turn out??)
Before I got a chance to do anything about it my housemate got a weed wacker. Which is not a fun way to cut grass and the cord didn’t reach the whole yard. But I only had to do it once for the inspector. My housemate usually does the yard stuff, so if he wants to use that, it’s fine by me.
And our front yard has a lot of moss. But Irene knocked down four trees in our front yard so there’s a lot more light now. The moss is dying and grass is taking over…
Now I’m wondering what to do about the back yard, which used to be a jungle. We got rid of all the bushy stuff but the ground is still covered in a thin layer of ivy (and I imagine small sticks and stones here and there). Will a normal mower take care of that? Can we just lay sod right on top to choke it out?
My lawn is maybe 30 x 20 in front and 20 x 10 in the back, much smaller than the one I had in NJ where I used a power mower. I’ve had this reel mower for 15 years, take it to get sharpened every year or so, and never had any problems. Always starts right up, don’t have to worry about running over my foot, and it navigates well around the tree in the middle of the front yard. It is also quiet. The trick is to not let your lawn grow too tall. Then it could be a pain, but usually it is fine. It also takes less space to store.
I use an edger most weeks and an electric weedwhacker every three weeks or so to cut by the brick and the tree and my solar lights.
I wouldn’t want it for a big lawn, but for mine it is great.
We bought a reel mower about a month ago to mow our rather hilly .4 acre lawn. It replaced a 6 year old Torro self propelled mower. It was less than reliable.
Cuts well, but you need to really over lap. It’s light weight less than half the gas mower and is actually easier to use on hills. So easy my wife uses it to mow the lawn. It doesn’t like thick weeds or overly long and thin ones. But some broad spectrum weed spray curred that issue. I like not having to wear hearing protection while I mow.
We have a small suburban lawn, and we use a reel mower. It’s more work, especially if the grass gets tall. However, it’s quieter, safer and less smelly. Plus, if you run over a rock or dog crap, it doesn’t fling it against your feet the way a gas mower does.
Our gas-powered lawn mower died earlier this year. I’d been thinking about getting a reel mower for a while, so I lobbied Dear Robert for it, and we got one. We got the Scotts 20" reel mower at Home Depot.
My front yard is approximately 40’x44’, I guess, and my back yard’s a little smaller. I’ve got a real mix of grass and weeds in both places.
Everyone who says that the reel mower doesn’t take down the tall skinny weeds and the tall dandelion stalks well is pretty much right. They tend just to get pushed over. So I either pull them by hand as I walk by, or carry grass shears and snip them off. Doing that doesn’t add significantly to my mowing time. My goal is to gradually get rid of those weeds, and then I won’t have to worry about them.
My back yard is more lumpy-bumpy, and it is a little harder to get grass cut there. But not much.
I do mow more frequently, but it doesn’t take me as long as it did with our gas mower. I would tend to wait till the grass was WAY tall before I used the gas mower, because I hated using that mower so much. And then it would take me ages to mow, because I’d have to do two passes to get the grass short enough that it didn’t look like ass. But with the reel mower, it’s easy to mow. I just pull it out and start mowing. When I’m done, I brush any grass clippings off with an old paint brush I keep for that purpose, wipe the blades down with WD-40 and I’m done.
And it’s so quiet. It works for me.
The one aggravating thing is sticks and pine cones. If you catch a stick or a pine cone in the blades, they STOP. So you have to stop, roll the blades back a bit, and remove the stick. That slows me down more than pulling up the tall weeds that don’t get cut.
My lawn actually looks better now than it did when I had a power mower. But that’s partly because I mow more often. But since it’s easier FOR ME to mow, I don’t mind.
I’m pretty sure at this point that we’ll be getting a new electric mower this coming spring. I mowed our hilly front yard with the reel mower, and it damned near killed me (plus there are a lot of pine cones on one side, and yes, it did stop on all of them). It’s fine for the flat back yard still.
I grew up with hand-pushed reel mowers – it was all we could afford. I can’t imagine anyone really wanting to use one unless the lawn was the size of a postage stamp. And if it was that small, I think an electric (even one with a rechargeable battery on board) would be the solution if noise was a consideration.
And sheep include automatic fertilizing units as a bonus.
