So how much grass is too much for a finish mower? I recently purchased about 5 acres with home. Approx. 2 acres around house has manicured lawn with remaining 3 acres taller grass with cherry trees. Obviously been mowed before, (no saplings or heavy brush) but not on regular basis. This is in northern MI and grass seems fairly fine. So my question is at what point does a rotary cutter/bush hog become necessary over a finish mower? I would eventually like to keep the whole 5 acres mowed on a regular basis.
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If you purchase a rotary cutter or rear finish mower UGHHH!!!, you will have tremendous
amounts of cuttings that will not degrade into mulch and create dead spots from laying on the sod.
This dead grass and brush will create huge homes for insects and animals that can and will spread
grass diseases and increase the habitat for small rodents that will spread disease.
The rotary cutter or finish mower will not reduce the invasive plants like poison ivy, poison sumac,
and poison oak where the flailmower will mow the brush and grass to the sod and keep these
invasives from spreading and they wil eventually die off.
You will be much better off purchasing a flail mower for this as you will be able to mow wet grass
with ease and the grass clippings from the flail mower.
The flail mower in use cuts the brush and grass a a very high speed using the verticut method which
slices the grass and brush into very small cuttings and the clippings degrade very, very quickly.
If you have an instance where you have a lot of debris after cutting you can mow over it again with the
flailmower and shred them a second or third tome if desired and it will degrade very quickly for you and
add mulch back to the soil quickly.
The flailmower cuts along its entire width using every grass slicer that is mounted on the rotor wherein
each and every grass slicer mounted on the flail mower rotor is used in mowing where only half the cutting width of each mower blade
is used at any time on a rotary cutter or finish mower; for example the flailmower in my case is 48 inches wide in cutting width and
Each grass slicer has 1.5 inches of cutting edge and each row has 16 pairs of grass slicers which provides the end user with
a total of 48 inches of overlapping cutting edge to mow the brush and grass.
The four rows of grass slicers provide 172 inches of cutting edge exposed to the grass or brush versus 24 inches of cutting edge in the
same size finish mower or rotary cutter. A flailmower is much safer to use around pedestrians and 4 legged rug rats wherein if the mower
impacts an object the object will stay within the flailmower hood and not have the opprtunity to become a missle and be thrown out of the
mower to cause injury or property damage.
Each pair of grass slicers has 3 inches of exposed cutting edge, most grass slicers
have 2 cuting edges giving you six inches of cutting surface so you can simply flip
the grass slicer over to expose the new edge quickly and go back to mowing.
So in using my example the flail mower has 344 inches of usable cutting edge to use versus the
actual 24 inches exposed edge of a rotary cutter or finish mower as only half the cutting edge is used
per rotation of the mower blades.
If you purchase a flail mower with a finish mower rotor you will be able to mow both your lawn and your
field with the same machine eliminating the need to buy 2 different mowers.
Please contact Ken Sweet and ask him about his lines of flail mowers as he is a forum sponsor in good standing
and he also ships from his warehouse in kentucky to your door.