How much time do you spend mowing?

I mowed in about 1 1/2 hrs before my back surgery last year. But when the DH took over the job, he hired someone. He does it for almost nothing and it takes hime twice as long as me. So he is still doing it. I wasn't that through when I did it.

Lawn care is included in our rent, which is ironic since this is the smallest yard we have ever had and up until now I have always done all the lawn upkeep!

I have mowed, but would rather garden so I hire it now. No riding mower because of all the trees to go around, but the mower is self propelled. It takes me an hour with no trimming.....less if I'm in a bad mood. I intend to remove about 1/4 of the lawn in the next few weeks. My lawn is mostly weed choked so I've decided that garden beds and walkways will be replacing most of it.

It takes us about 4 1/2 hours to mow - that's with DH weed eating, and the kids picking up anything that got thrown out of a car going down the street, rolling up water hoses, and picking up anything else in the yard. It needs to be done EVERY weekend from about March until the end of October. Needless to say, with all the rain we've had this year, it's needing it a lot more, and we're able to mow it a lot less.

I voted 1 hour. I have several raised beds, so have to mow around them. Takes a bit of time.

Very pretty, Teresa! Lovely colors.

My hubby mows but once my son is old enough hopefully he'll do it . I told hubby I'll take over the weed wacking duties since he sliced my nasturtiums. Takes all total 3-4 hours to do it right with a ride-on, slowly but surely taking more area away for more gardens. I'll try to get it down to an hour.
Hats off to Don for another wonderful poem.
Digatunnel, glad everything worked out

Hehehehe, I've dug almost of it up for daylilies!! next year no grass!!! hehe evil laugh!

I voted for 1hour, but that's with DH on the riding mower, and me on the self-propelled hand mower. Then another for trimming, with both of us trimming at the same time.

I have to admit we're both perfectionists with our lawn, and gardens-altho I handle the gardens by myself! ha.

All the border and foundation beds are edged, or have stacked "walls"-no island gardens here, or DH won't help mow anymore. :-(
Ahhh, if I was younger, that wouldn't bother me-but, meanwhile it's truly a beautifully groomed and lucious landscape.

Can someone please explain to me, why grass is so unnatural and bad for the environment? I garden organic and I use no chemicals on my lawn, so how is it bad for the environment? As far as it being unnatural, how is a mowed lawn any less natural than a rock border around a bed or a gravel or rock walkway? If you don't like lawns, that's fine, but don't make us, with lawns, look environmentally unfriendly.

Laugh, Resin & DonShirer, you all are too too funny :D
We have a reel mower and a weedwacker and it still takes under a half hour, that's how little land we've got.
Broncbuster, I can remember one year I went out to visit my dad in CA and we could only flush if we pooped, the water table was that low. Lush green lawns were a big no no. Now this year, they can water (and flush, thank god!) all they want.

Broncbuster. Really the lawn, or grass it's self is inviromently frindly.
But it is the people that ruin the inviroment, with the power mower, the power blower, and so forth. That is not even getting into the fertilization & chemicals to control the little insects that like to hide in the grass, people use, to help the grass grow , and be people frindly, then the over watering and runoff..
I like a nice lawn, but if it can't Survive on it's own, I'm sorry I don't water it, as I would just have to mow it all the more.
I do not complain about any one who does water and fertilize. But with the gas prices, I enjoy a break during the dry spell, of not having to support the oil companies. LOL
By the way everybody, It wasn't me that intered a gripe about a lawn being unfrindly to the inviroment. I'm innocent. Just looking at what people do. I'm thinking about getting a goat to take care of the back part of my acre an a half. Then I would be guilty of causing goat flatuants that are bad for the Ozone. Another sinister chuckle :) Russ

First thing I did when I moved into my new house was rip out the sod and put in rocks, mulch, shrubs and perennials, with room for annuals. Gave my lawn mower to my poor sister (she hasn't learned) and I never looked back.

I love the look of a nice lawn, but just the look!

I have someone who comes and mows the yard for me. I am blessed. I don't believe I could do my flower gardens AND my yard... He usually has it complete, including weed-eating and edging, in an hour.

I pay somebody. When I do it, it's a couple of hours. When they do it, it's about 20-30 minutes.

I wish I had their equipment; I'd do it myself!

I have about 2 1/2 acres but so much is either natural or gardenbeds that it takes me less than an hour on a riding mower. No perfectionism here and heavy mulch whenever possible!

Well, there's hardly more than a few blades of grass in my lawn. Mostly, it's dandelions, creeping charlie and clover. Oh, wait, does crabgrass count as grass or weed?

DH mows the lawn and it takes him 3 hours to do all of it. Now, we only have 1/3 of an acre... including the house, driveway, garage and all my flower beds.... what's he doing in those 3 hours I wonder?

Don - another great poem

Harper

The property is not very large, just over an acre w/lots of trees, but the hill in the back (slopes down to a creek) is a killer.

Great prose Don! I said an hour because husband speeds around on the lawn tractor and I do the push mower around the gardens and plants. We've got 5 acres
but 2 belong to the donkey and I sometimes let him out to graze and keep the grass
down when its too wet to cut.

Hour to mow about 9,000 square foot+ yard. Another hour to edge. About 20 minutes to use the blower to clean drive/patio/sidewalks of grass clippings.

Used to have a self-propelled mower and bought a new one without this feature. NEVER again! Considering upgrade to riding mower. Also redoing beds so that the border edge materials level with lawn so we don't have as much to weedeat around. :)

But we love grass/lawn as much as plants so I could never engulf the whole landscape with plants. Kids/pets need a place to roam.

Hey, Russ, if you're serious about a goat, or anyone else is interested, I posted about some that need homes: http://davesgarden.com/forums/p.php?pid=3744890

I live in an apt, and on the third floor! But... what I wouldn't give to have a house with some property, so I could say I have to mow. Hubby loves to mow, and rake, and do all that stuff... so all I'd have to do is add the flowers!

What I wouldn't give...

I have enough to do without Mowing!!

It takes me an hour and a half to push mow three 60' wide properties and their ditches. I still have more grass than flower beds. I love to mow!

It takes me a couple of hours on a large lawn tractor--not counting any extra trimming etc.

I just have to post my all time favorite lawn mowing photo. This is Bill, my old neighbor, hauling a few of the neighborhood kids in his lawn cart on a late autumn afternoon. The kids are older now and Bill passed away last winter.

early_bloomer

It takes about 15 min. with our push mower. Next year it will probably be five. It's a good workout too.

My boyfriend's parents live on a farm and the horses used to eat the grass. Now most of the horses have died (various old-age illnesses) and they refuse to get any new animals, not even a goat. They complain how much work it is to water all of the pastures and then complain about how much work it is to mow all of the pastures. I say turn off the sprinklers and quit complaining. Drives me nuts!

LOL, Katlian, some people just enjoy having stuff to complain about, don't they? My mother is like that.

It currently takes my husband about an hour to mow the lawn, but I'm hoping to trim that time down. We have an agreement that he can have the front, but the back is mine! We are turning the back yard into a tropical oasis (we're working on it anyway). Oh well, he enjoys fighting the weeds and the drought for the grass.

Don, I like your poem!

Digatunnel - what a horror story! We had trouble with a handyman too, but nothing to that extent! I'm so sorry. At least everything turned out OK. We are renovating our home as well. Hang in there!

It takes about an hour to mow our lawn. My husband mows with a 0 radius lawn mower that we have had for 15 years and bags it and dumps it on one of two compost piles we have. I have reduced the lawn by about 30% and put it into gardens. I would like to end up with about 30% lawn eventually. However, gardens take a lot of time and energy as well. Weeding, mulching and watering in order to keep them from dying in drought times. I love the look of a swath of grass between gardens etc. With the price of food continually rising from gas prices going up and corn being used for ethanol--I see more of my friends starting to put in small veggie gardens. One comment on grass--someone asked what is wrong with lawns? To me, grass cuts down on a lot of "nature" happening. Dragonflies, butterflies, and other insects for birds as well as various seeds for fowl such as quail, pheasant, and turkey, also, you don't get the "run off" and less erosion problems. Look at all the time and energy we spend on grass!! --me included.

When DH was deployed, I needed a mower that I could start, so I did my research and came home from Home Depot with the best mower my $400 could buy!( DH complained about the price;)) Self propelled of course, I'm such a lightweight, and pushing it uphill if it wasn't..... yeah right! Took me between 3-4 hours, I was hauling.
DH comes home to take over the lawn and he complains about not having a riding mower (my original suggestion, a year ago!). I told him to go buy one, nope too cheap, but he still complains about it taking him so long to mow;) Maybe one day he'll listen and get the good one at the beginning (grins) LOL

I pay my son 50.00 to mow 1 time a month and he does it 2 times. About 45 min.

We have a study in contrasts in our yard. A rather pathetic looking lawn (especially this year with minimal rain) with a wide assortment of grass types (i.e. lots of green-colored weeds kind of pretending to be part of the lawn) and brown spots. We do mow it regularly and faithfully, but nobody has asked if they can play golf on it or use it to film a lawn mower commercial. Our garden beds, on the other hand, look mighty nice (in my opinion and in the opinion of our visitors). Each year a little more of the back yard is devoted to garden beds. I think we are moving in the right direction: more garden, less lawn.

My DH and DS take turns. Sometimes they do it together, 1 riding and the other trimming. I love watching them work together, it's like a harmony. Each week it takes about 2-3 hours, and they are sooo respectfull / fearfull of my flower beds. :)

I voted other because at the moment we are in drought - what grass! I have a big brown area.

But when it does rain - boy you can literally see the grass grow! I mean if it doesn't get mown within 2 weeks you could practically hunt giraffe in there!

Our yard is (one acre) heavily "Still Under Construction" (what gardener's isn't?) so there are places that can be mowed with the tractor easily, other areas have to be done with the push mower. We're out in the country so we can do as we please, if the grass gets too high it's no big deal. It's a dreaded chore but I can't afford to have anyone else come and do it.

I have two acres and it seems like 10 after going around all of the flower beds so it takes forever (about 4 hrs.) and then there is the trimming? I don't like grass cutting at all even with the riding lawn mower, our yard is full of bumps, hills, sink holes and on top of that it's all down hill so very hard to plant along with the lovely clay and nice rocks you run into oh and I can't forget the tree roots! My dream is to have no grass and making a pretty good dent in it this year around the house :-) It takes me a couple of hours to trim but every time I get done I see where I missed a bunch never fails lol

Thanks for the pictures, everyone. It's nice to see them.

I voted several hours ... we don't have a huge yard, but big enough and I am the one who does the mowing, edging etc every week ... since hubby works full time. Years ago when I was younger I could do the entire thing in about an hour .... now I have to take many breaks cause I can't stand the heat/humidity! So, it usually takes me 3-4 hours depending if I am in the mood to be neighborly and mow my next door neighbors lawn too! They work long hours and don't have a lot of time to do anything in their yard. Someday we will afford a lawn company to come and do it all .... til then .... it's just little ole' me on my riding mower!

We got a tractor mower, but they don't let me play with it. That's Husband, Son and Daughter in Law, so I don't, I just complain if it's too long!

Bigs - it grows like that in Florida too.

This message was edited Jul 18, 2007 2:29 PM