Garden Tractors for the Small Country Place

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However, you can not count on reliable service, timely warranty repairs, or refunds for no-name brands bought at super-low prices by mail order or from a discount mall store. Indeed, given the current upheaval in discount retailing, there's no guarantee that your local Wal-Mart or whatever will be around six months from now.

Choices

Riding mower, lawn tractor, garden tractor, vintage farm tractor or compact tractor ...each has strengths and weaknesses, pros and cons. Price, value and capability vary with the horsepower and configuration of the machine. And you can get them new, slightly used, recycled and vintage. What is best for you and your place?

Riding Mower
Little 5 to 7hp lawn mower engines are found in older rear-engined riding mowers and a few (too) small engine in front tractors running permanently attached single-bladed mowers. It's all a small engine can do to push along a machine with an adult rider aboard and move a rotary blade at engine speed (2,500 rpm) at the same time, so work pace is glacially slow. But, the deliberate pace permits more careful attention to the work and lets the blade make several passes over each grass clump, so they do a more uniform mowing job than more powerful multi-blade mowers that cover more ground at a higher speed. The lowest gear on a riding mower moves you at just a tad above a (literal) snail's pace-a good deal slower than a push or self-propelled walking mower. But the mower deck extends outboard of the wheels on one or both sides so that you can see where you are mowing and can trim precisely under shrubs and close alongside the alyssum bedding plant borders.

Most brands offer mulching mower decks that-if operated at a slow ground speed-chop grass or fallen leaves into tiny bits for direct recycling in the sod so you avoid the bother and soil-depletion attendant to collecting and composting or disposing of the plant matter.

Wheels are small diameter, so relatively inefficient, poor-gripping, and difficult to maneuver in tall grass. Riders are potentially dangerous-can slip, slide, and tip on grades, and the deck can bottom out and scalp the sod bald on uneven ground.

Steering mechanisms on low-end models are as primitive as a child's kiddy car. Riders should be used only on flat, even, bump-free turf.

New riders cost from just under $800 for an 8-hp bare-bones model to $2,500 for a commercial deck-in-front estate mower. Used prices average half the cost of new.

A riding mower can't power accessories and is a reasonably priced, one-purpose machine-a sit-down lawn-grass cutter. If your lawn contains a lot of shrubbery or small plantings to be maneuvered around ...and, you have reason to mow it sitting down ...a riding mower is a good low-cost choice. More than a few senior citizens and handicapped home owners continue caring for their lawns long after being wheelchair-bound or rigged with a pacemaker or walking cane ...thanks to a battery/key-start, easy-operating riding mower, a garage with a remote-control door opener, and easy-graded transitions from driveway to turf.

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