So the foot and a half of grass in the back yard finally had to be dealt with this weekend. I did some research and decided to pick up a manual mower and a cordless electric weed whacker.
I didn’t want to deal with gas for either device. They’re a pain to start, cost more to run, and break down a lot more. For the mower, I went with the Scotts 20″ Classic Push Reel Mower. From the research I’ve done it’s a lot nicer to your grass, really isn’t that hard to push, and doesn’t require any fuel, just muscle. The only downside is that the grass has to be below a certain length or it won’t cut.
Gas mowers have a circular motion that just sucks up and slices anything in its path. Push reel mowers work with shorter grass to maintain it, but longer grass just bends down when the blades go over it and then bend back up afterwards.
So, to get started I also needed a trimmer. Again I didn’t want to deal with gas so I went for a cordless electric trimmer. The Black & Decker 12″ Grasshog Cordless String Trimmer. It comes with 2 batteries, each was enough to get one yard – one for the front, one for the back. Takes about 3 hours to charge up, and I had to use it a lot more than normal because I was trimming the entire lawn so I could mow.
It has a lot of power and has an autospooling feature so you don’t have to bump it to get more string to come out. Very nice, but I imagine it’ll go through string a lot faster. Still, not having to deal with gas is a huge advantage for me, and I have a really small lawn.
So I trimmed and mowed everything back into shape. I had to pick up some Round-up to kill off some weeds, but otherwise it’s looking good. Now to get a rake and clean out some left over sticks & leaves…