How much time do you spend mowing?

I have no grass at home, however, at work I mow between my veggies bed which takes 30-45 minutes.

My husband had a quad bypass and met a patient in hospital whose son was a gardener. He was just the person we were looking for. We hired him and they have been cutting the grass and doing other heavy gardening work ever since. Two men come--one trims and the other cuts the lawn. They are a whiz and within 20-25 minutes are finished. Plus, it only costs $30.00 a cut. A price we can live with, both being retired.

If I had my way, my entire property would be all natural/native plantings with absolutely NO lawn to mow! Hubby loves the green grass ... have never been able to convince him how pretty it would look with garden beds everywhere!

I have some lawn, but it's dead... so requires very little mowing

Yes, dead lawns don't require much care. I like that.

I spend 2 days mowing. That is with the rider, the push mower, and weed eating. If I really push I can get it done in one day but then I am really hurting afterwards. If I spread it over 2 then it is pleasant. I usually mow for an hour or two and then do another chore for about an hour and then back to mowing. There are probably about 3 acres in lawn but many trees, flowers, fences etc in it. I do not let anyone else mow as they will only do the riding part and I am left with all of the rest.

Good idea G M. Even I don't care for the trimming and such. Try to get it all with the rider. In the fence line I use round-up. But then I am not surounded by lawns. The south is pasture, West is corn field, North is a junky yard. I mow the one East of me. We don't have a resident minister in the parsonage, So that is part of my tythe. Sometimes I start feeling like they think I'm the gardener. :)

Finally!

I actually do like to weedeat around the bricks after I mow, but I do use RU on the weeds that poke up through my bark mulch under a tree and behind my house. ;o)

I really try to use no chemical means on most of my gardening but for some weeds the only way to get rid of them is with RU. Violets and there is this one grase that spreads by runners..and the last owner planted the fertile type of lambsear. Ripped it out 5 years ago and it's still popping up

I have no grass and don't miss it. There are just too many other things to grow that give me more pleasure.

LOL - now we're getting interesting...

I am thrilled to say I have no lawn to mow! It has taken a few years to get to this lawnless point, but it was worth the effort.

lincolnitess;
:o) It would take me past my furneral to get rid of my acre of lawn and make it as nice as all your flowers. But that is a great looking yard.

licolnitess, I would love to do what you have done!......and I would if we were planning to stay at this house for the rest of our lives. Alas, grass is easier to neglect than flowerbeds, so we feel we should at least keep most of it in grass.

I only have .11 acre to begin with but I am slowly turning it all into a cottage garden. When I do mow, I use a small electric mower.

If I did it all in one day about 2 1/2 hours. I usually divide it up into 4 sections over two days.

I pay a lawn service to cut and trim every two weeks. The patches of Bahia Grass needs cutting every three days though. Grrr. It takes three guys about an hour to cut our three acres.

I've removed much of the turf area and replaced it with mixed perennial and shrub borders. Takes me 20 - 30 minutes to mow, if that.

I tore out my conventional lawn, planted an edible landscape on most of it, and replaced the grass on the smaller lawn left with Pacific Sod's No-Mow Fescue Mix. I am VERY happy with it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spidra/487063625/

spidra, that link says, "This photo is private. You do not have permission to view this photo."

Yep, try another link Spidra.

Whoops! Sorry about that. I'm doing some neighborhood activism and it's made me change my privacy settings on Flickr in case some of the neighborhood baddies decide to target me. Here's the photo directly.

I voted other cuz my hubby mows the lawn. He wants it he can mow it. I would prefer gardens all the way around. I weed'em I water 'em and what not. He doesn't ant to mow I will put all gardens in and then the work is mine.

Spidra, that grass is so fine, it looks like you could comb it--never saw any like that! Good luck with your neighborhood project. Hope you can make a difference, 'specially since my son will be going to U.C. Berkeley soon. I want to feel good about it being safe for him.

Renee'

My husband wanted a "golf course lawn", and he almost did himself in rototilling to put one in. since then, as I gradually partition off for shrubs, trees and plant islands, I am not hearing any complaints. LOL

It takes me about 2 hours by the time I edge and weed eat around the house and fixtures. I am 70 years old and whe i am not golfing im enjoying my yard great exercise

We have 8 acres and mow about 6 of it. It used to take my husband 9 hours to mow it with a small Kubota tractor and pull behind Turf Hog!! Now we have a Scag zero-turn with a 6-foot deck and he can do it in half the time. I help him now on a small riding mower and we can do it in about 3 hours together. In a normal spring when we get normal rain (we're in drought this year), we have to mow about every three days! We have tons of trees to go around, or we could do it in less time.

My daughter's landlord was making muttering noises about the lawn needing mowing.The flatmates did not own a mower...Solution-they had a twilight outdoor barbecue/party on the lawn-it was all trampled down flat.
Emelle

KyWoods, in general Berkeley is a lot safer than some of the other cities in the East Bay. However, I live in an area on the border which is poorer and prone to drug wars between North Oakland gangs and Berkeley gangs (yes, even Berkeley has gangs). The best advice I could give your son is not to be ostentatious in public use of iPods and other tech gadgets with a high resale value. That attracts muggers. The other crime a student might be prey to is bike theft. Make sure he has a "new york" strength lock and locks his bike well at all times. It's easy to get lazy and say "it's safe just this one time" but that one time is when it gets stolen.

I hope your son has a great time. UC Berkeley is a fine institution and a lovely campus. Great libraries, too!

Grandmaggie ~ you asked what's a brush hog (or brand name ~ bush hog) It is a tractor pto driven mower... heavy duty. It can cut down small trees, limbs, etc. Large rotary blades cuts fast and works well for larger areas. http://www.bushhog.com/agtoc.html

Thanks for the advice, spidra, I will pass it on to him. I don't remember hearing anything bad about the campus, but bad apples can turn up anywhere. I do know that Oakland has some dangerous neighborhoods.

Podster, thanks for the bush hog link--always wondered what one looked like. We could use one to trim the sides of our driveway, as the woods are continually closing in on it. I'll bet they can be rented, too.

Since my front lawn is peanut gras I might mow once a month

KyWoods ~ you might even find someone to do the bushhogging for you reasonably. In this area, you can hire it done. pod

I have systematically reduced most of my lawn. If I had my way my yard would be nothing but flower beds. I spend all of 10 minutes when I cut. I fertilize well so I still need to cut it 2 times a week, even now when my cool season turfgrass is slowing down.

It used to take me over an hour to mow my very small front lawn. I would mow a complete strip and stop for a beer. Then, I would mow another strip and enjoy another beer. This continued until I completed the lawn. Every time I went indoors, my wife always asked what was taking me so long in mowing the lawn! I would shrug my shoulders and give her the biggest grin!!

Now, I have lawn service. It turned out that I'm highly allergic to Bermuda grass and my wife hoped that I was allergic to beer! Ohhhhhhh, how I miss those beers!!

I used the same logic w/car maintainence, turn a bolt, have a brew, would take 12 hours to do an oil change but at the end of the day the oil was changed and I was not going anywheres. cheers.

I love mowing too, I can only count the a few times my dh has mowed around the house. I mow with a push mower for 1 1/2 hours and then on the rider down the lane, around the pond, orchard etc for another 1 to 2 hours. Dh does use the tractor and gyro mower around the fields. Part of the living on the farm I guess.

I pretty much enjoying mowing when I am not too busy. I have had problems with Brown Patch Disease for the past 10 years, having renovated the lawn with Tall Fescue at that time. I finally decided to resort to spraying Daconil this year and have sprayed the lawn 3 times so far. There is no Brown Patch. I have used Organic Lawn Restore on the lawn for the past 10 years also, only using it twice in the Fall. I was always told not to fertilize the lawn except in the Fall. This year I just decided to experiment on my own. I fertilized last Fall, then again in the early spring then again about a week ago. I also put Composted Cow Manure on the lawn in early May to increase the good microorganisms. I also sprayed Actinovate, a new biological control for Brown Patch Disease. I have continued with the organic treatments on the lawn but this time just decided to try the Daconil and see what happens and so far it has worked. Now I am dealing with Nutsedge and no matter what others may say--pulling that stuff up by the roots does not work. I have also done that for the past 10 years. I do not have a lot of it but it is so horrible to look at and it quickly grows taller than the good grass. So this year I purchased Sedgehammer, and am getting ready to spray that today and again in two weeks. I have been told that it will take two years to rid the lawn of Nutsedge and some have told me I may keep it under control but will never completely get rid of it. So we will see.

I finally got the grass cut yesterday, and it takes me about 40 minutes for my 3,000sq foot lawn. I enjoy cutting the grass more in the spring and I am pleased with the way the whole front yard looks right after cutting the grass. In previous years when the lawn would go downhill by the end of June---the flowers in the front yard would not look as beautiful --because of the ugly lawn. So this year it is all looking great. I am no fan of herbicides but it is working for me. I guess I will use Daconil again next year, at the same low dosage preventative rate, until they come up with a totally disease resistant Fescue grass seed.