Garden Tractors for the Small Country Place

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

However, if you have a steady supply of teens, or if your own health permits you to operate a walking mower, you are heart and wallet well ahead sticking with a walk-behind mower.

Minitractors
If your outdoor activities encompass more than lawn care. . . if you keep livestock and have to haul feed, bedding, and manure ...or have a large enough garden to need mechanical cultivation .... if you cut and haul your own fuel wood ...have a long drive needing occasional ditching, grading or snow removal-in short, if you live on a big place and/or operate a minifarm, you should consider a more expensive and more capable lawn or garden tractor. With front-mounted, horizontal-shaft engines, the larger models can be used to power a full line of accessories as well as the mower deck.

Most 5 to 10hp lawn tractors have removable single-or twin-blade 24- to 28inch mower decks, but like riders, are intended for little more than mowing flat lawns and perhaps pulling a small trailer hauling peat moss out to the garden. Recommended for a half acre of lawn or less.

Larger 12 to 16hp lawn/garden tractors have big single-cylinder or smoother running twin-cylinder engines, larger 36- to 42inch decks and can operate attachments like small scraper or snow blades and self-propelled tillers. Some are equipped with PTO, which operates moderate-size tractor engine-powered garden tillers and snow blowers. The better lines come with hydrostatic drives that offer automatic shifting. Good for one or two acres of turf.

The next step up, garden tractors, are powered by 18, 20hp and larger engines, have automotive-quality chassis, forged axles and steering, and cost over $2500. Models with more than 20 hp will have a big twin-cylinder, air-cooled engine, and with up to 5-foot wide mower decks, can mow three acres. If equipped with saline solution-filled tires, wheel- and rear-mount weights, they can handle small farm chores and even relatively heavy construction (on an occasional basis). They will push, pull, carry or power dozens of implements to handle every conceivable farmstead chore. The better models sport small hydraulic systems to operate small bucket/fork loaders and back-hoe style trenchers. You can get a barn full of small-farm implements: plow, harrows, cultivators, tillers in several sizes, manure and fertilizer spreaders and chipper grinders. For lawn care, in addition to mowers in widths from 24 inches to 6 feet are rollers, seeders, fertilizer and lime spreaders, aerators and several styles of clipping collectors and lawn vacuums. To keep the brush down, you can buy heavy-duty rotary brush hog mowers, front or side-mount sickle bar cutters and gang reel mowers. For landscaping, there are front, back and belly-mount dozer and scraper blades, trailers in several sizes, rotary brushes, scoops and scarifiers. Snow can be removed with blades or blowers in widths up to 40 inches and more, and you can buy fully enclosed cabs to stay out of the cold. They can move along at 8 to 10 mph, but run a lot slower with heavy work, so if you are willing to spend the time to work at the tractor's pace, you can log your woods, run a maple-sap-collecting "sugar bush," build a road, dig a cellar hole or set a concrete slab for a new house or barn—even dig a pond and build a rock dam.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print