Good Moring New BX2360 Owner with Questions

[Chugbug]

I have 6.5 acres I mow with a BX25 with a 60" MMM and it works great. 2 acres is yard with the rest being old farm land and it does an awesome job. I've cut my trimming back from an hour to about 15 minutes because of the 60" foot print. I had a rear mower but I prefer the MMM for my use. If you have trees, bushes, flower beds, etc you will be happier with the MMM it will allow for a closer cut with a lot less maneuvering. Down side to the MMM it takes a bit longer to hook up but I've got it down to about 10 minutes. Good luck and let us know what route you took

 

[Chugbug]

Forgot to add I had a local farmer come in and bush hog and then tilled up the old farm field and leveled it out. I keep the yard cut at 5 inches and the field I keep at 3.

 

[Panik]

Ah well that is/was the debate - continue using the 60" mmm and risk tearing it up or get a brush hog. If you look at the pictures I posted earlier just about everything I'm mowing is shrubby/weedy stuff, no trees, or really woody brush. Upon that basis alone I think I could probably get away with using the mmm if I set the cutting height high. The problem comes in that the land I am concerned about was a cornfield and still has corn stubble and the more than occasional cob laying around. I'd like to be able to close mow this area for a while until we are able to do something a little more intensive with it. However, having just thrown out some serious cash, I really don't want to beat up my mmm just to chew up corn cobs and weeds.

There is the idea of getting it brush hogged once and seeing how that will work however there are periods that the ground gets wet enough to prevent equipment use - hence possibly growing too high and needing to brush hogged again. Any case I'm going round and round in circles at the moment and leaning towards purchasing a smaller brush hog for the field and using the mmm on the lawn for the reasons you mentioned Chugbug.

 

[RaydaKub]

Awww, come on, that takes the fun out of it! One thing I like with my BX, is that while blading, I can back up, let off the pedal, it will pick the front end up about 2", and I use it to turn around quicker. (Disclaimer: don't try this at home, and it's not like I drive like this all of the time, and ONLY do it on flat ground.)

I mowed a church cemetery for several years using a 16hp Allis Chalmers back in the late 70's. Anybody that's done that knows you just about wear out the steering wheel. Well, this Allis had a heck of a hydro on it. I could back up, turn the wheel and hit the hydro forward and just about do a 180 with it. The first time was accidental. After that it got real handy.

Sent from my iPad using TractorByNet

 

[Panik]

Figured I drop by and give a bit of an update on how things are going. I've really appreciatec the advice i recieved in this thread and have nejoyed reading through the ret of the forum. I'm still planning on getting a 4 brush hog in the reasonable future. However since the tractor was delivered I've been nibbling away at a test plot at house....taking a little off the top each time so as to not overwhelm the mower deck of hit anything hidden. Any case here's a before and after:

Before


After


Next step is putting in a movable bridge to span the drainage trench on the foreground so I don't wind up with a giant mud trench by the end of summer.

By the way does anyone have any thoughts on what species these plants are?



The flowering plants were dominating the field before I started mowing and now this short grass seems to be spreading rather quickly. I was thinking it might be a bluegrass of some sort but I'm not familiar with NW Ga plants.

 

[vrmnthntr]

Not sure what the actual name of the flowering plants are but we call them buttercups (or weeds). They come up in the spring and I notice that horses leave them alone. Not sure what the other picture is of (more weeds?).

 

[radioman]

You sure nibbled away a good chunk of that field. As for plants - the yellow flowers is definitely buttercups. I like to pick one and hold it to my kids chin and say your chin is yellow from buttercup. (funny reactions from kids from 6 and under). The other pic i am not sure of.

 

[Panik]

Thanks for the identification of the buttercup. There's probably another 1.5 to 2 acres of field left that haven't been cut down, but I'm not planning on tackling that anytime soon.

Basically what I've been trying do is open up a bit of the field to see what I am dealing with in regards to water percolation and soil stability. We'd like to eventually have a smallish hobby farm type of thing going on for ours and the kids enjoyment.

The farmer who has historically leased our land and the surrounding area told us that it is too wet to do anything with regards to horses or small scale hobby farming and that he uses no till farming due to how wet the clay soil is. Granted this was in the same conversation that he told us that he was concerned that any changes we made to our property might mess up the drainage of the surrounding 40 or so acres.

In any case I've been pleasantly surprised at how quickly the ground firms up after rains no that the overgrowth has been reigned in. Between that and using the middlebuster I got from TSC to open up the clogged drainage trenches I've gone form have water standing on the field for a week at a time down to 12-24 hours. I've been doing some reading on sub-soiling and mole plowing and when we get to the dry season might look into that if it looks like the soil will support it without too much erosion.

 

[Danner]

Haven't read the whole thread, but...

I would find a way to run a disc harrow over that a few times. Maybe find a neighbor that would help you out one time, or rent a 4' unit for your BX.

Then, I would buy a chain harrow, and drag it flat enough to mow with you 60" MMM. Then I would seed it and got some turf going.

As a routine, I would then chair harrow it every 3-4 times you mow it. Fertilize as needed. Buy the end of the second season, it would look like the fairways at Augusta National.

Good luck.

 

[Panik]

Well the disc harrow and chain drag will probably have to wait -although they are excellent suggestions. So two nights ago we got 3.5" of rain and the neighboring creek jumped the bank by about 2.5 vertical feet. And the field now looks like this:



On the plus side looking at USGS data for the last 5 years it only seems to happen in spring and usually about 1 a year. Downside is that well it floods and that sucks, and limits what we can use the field for. Our original idea was to possibly fence it and the remainder of the five acres for a horse of two for the kids. Obviously that's not really a viable option now because we don't have enough upland to keep equines while the field dries out.

So we're thinking fence a portion of it for the kids and the dogs. Maybe build a smaller dry paddock on nearby higher land and manage the field for a couple to 6 spoiled sheep/goats that occasionally wind up on the dinner table.

On the plus side USGS has a really cool service where some of their river data loggers will text you when certain parameters like gauge height are exceeded. I get text warning now when the river gets near flood stage. Also I met one of our neighbors as a result of the flooding: