Mowing around and between trees

flusher · May 2, 2006

Here in the North Valley we have tens of thousands of acres of orchard (olives, English walnuts, almonds, peaches, apricots, nectarines, Mandarin oranges, etc).

The trees are laid out on a square grid. In one direction on the grid the trees are mulched with the mulch strip extending from tree to tree. In the perpendicular direction the ground cover is grass which is mowed with finish mowers and kept trimmed so equipment (sprayers, trimmers, etc) can get in the orchard.

Also, the ground is flat and smooth, and is kept that way with occasional harrowing.

I think your best bet is to level and smooth the ground and mulch around your trees. Then you can use a CUT or sub-CUT with ROPS removed to keep the grass mowed.

flusher · May 2, 2006

<font color="blue"> In the perpendicular direction the ground cover is grass which is mowed with finish mowers and kept trimmed so equipment (sprayers, trimmers, etc) can get in the orchard.
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Oops: make that parallel, not perpendicular. The mulch strips and grass strips run parallel.

H3hound · May 2, 2006

I'm with you, Egon. I have at least 100 live oaks. I have created a landscape plan that surrounds many of them with mulch beds where practical - mostly near the house. Its time to relocate some sod!

SWB · May 2, 2006

Thanks Bird and the rest of you for replying. The trees are of different sizes with some of the large oaks up to 3' in diameter. Some are on little hills and some have root system higher than the surrounding area. If you level the ground out, you will destroy a good number of the trees.

Egon. I think the idea of planting schrubs around the trees is a good one and I will plan on doing so.

H3hound. That's a good suggestion for around the house, but
not for all the trees I have next to the marsh.

I do have space under most of the trees to accomodate a mower with a ROPS system. I am taking all of your comments into consideration and will be visiting several of the local dealers to see machines you suggested. I truly appreciate all the input from this forum and the L&G forum (thanks jcmseven). Any other suggestions will also be appreciated. I have to balance $$$ vs. benefit.