Hoping for an affordable solution….

[oosik]

I mow the meadow next to the house and call it part of my lawn. I leave the clipping were they fall. This meadow is 100% field grass.

 

[CH4Ohio]

I’ve got a Kubota compact tractor L4400-45 hp. Occasionally I mow My 10 acre prairie to help keep down invasives. I use a LandPride 6’ brush hog. I would like to have something to rake up what I mow and use it in my large country garden for mulch to keep weeds down. Probably only use 2-3 acres of hay. I tried putting a landscape rake on the back of my tractor to try to gather up the cut hay but that is too rough and tears up the prairie. I thought about a pine needle rake but not sure about that. I’ve been looking for a very small hay rake that could rake it into rows and then I would use my grapple to grab piles of it and take it to my garden. What do you think would be the best solution and still keep it affordable <$650? Thanks for your help!

I think one problem you may be overlooking is that you're trying to rake grass clippings, not mowed hay. A bush hog chops grass up into clippings like a lawn mower, a little rougher I know, but nonetheless it's not just cut at the base and left to fall like a sickle mower or a disc mower. No one making hay would use a bushhog for this reason.

If it were possible to rake it and bale it successfully, this might be a preferred way to cut it, since it would dry faster. But it's not possible to really rake it or bale it.

Because it's chopped up clippings, I don't think that a hay rake is going to work very well for you.

P.S. --- I used to have a bagger on a riding mower and I dumped the clippings in my garden for mulch. Worked great to control weeds. But, of course, I was using the air flow from the deck to catch them in the first place. Also I didn't have the seed issues that have been mentioned by others because it was just grass clippings.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

I use this rake, or one that looks like it:

Hay Rakes 3-point Hay Rake

Use hay when needing to move crops into windrows. This efficient 5 wheel hay rake is 17 ft. in length, is durable, constructed from steel.

www.agrisupply.com

I have used it to gather hay on a small scale. It pulls the hay on the ground to the right of the tractor into a straight row behind the tractor. I find I can do about three rows overlapping before the pile gets too big and the rake starts jumping. If on each pass I also come back in the other direction I can end up with six rows in one long pile. I don't have a grapple but I made a rake for the FEL that I can drive into the pile and then pick up a bunch and take it where I need it.

But it's slow work. Loose hay is really light. I might get 4,000 pounds per acre, which works out to 1.6 ounces per square foot. I ended up buying a 50-year-old Deere 24T baler for $900. It still makes four bales a minute so I can bale 4,000 lbs in about 20 minutes. Even if I'm not using the hay for hay it's the quickest way to get it out of the field.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

A couple of pictures. Here's a big pile of hay I made just by raking with the wheel rake. You can see from the field in the foreground that it does a pretty good job of picking it up.

Here's the hay rake on the FEL with a pretty good load. On the back is the wheel rake I use.

 

[zzvyb6]

I burn it. Call the fire department first to let them know its a controlled burn and have blowers and water on site.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

A hay rake works just fine on rotary cut grass, I do it year after year.

As for adding it to the garden for mulch, that works perfectly too, you just have to put it on heavy, and then the seeds in it won't sprout! I do this every year too, and if needed I can did up some picts. for proof...

And all that mulch does a good job of composting out, and feeding next years plants too. Another plus is, after a few years of doing this, I have less "bad bug" problems.

SR

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Burn it?? What a waste!

SR

 

[5030]

I just use Roundup Ultra Max on the garden and don't worry about weeds.