Ideal Heavy-Duty Mower for Your Meadow

Reader Contribution by Joel Dufour
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I don’t want to mow my meadow every week with a riding mower, but I do need to mow it once or twice per year to keep weedy trees from moving in. What kind of heavy-duty mower do you recommend?

Many people mow large areas too often. If you spend less time mowing, you’ll not only save time and gas money, but you’ll also preserve a vastly better habitat for birds, bees and other wildlife. To mow tall grass a couple of times per year, a brush mower or a flail mower is the most effective tool.

Brush mowers rotate on a vertical axis — either a heavy-duty, two-ended blade or, in the case of higher-quality mowers, a disk rotating on a vertical axis, usually with two hinged blades. The hinged blades better protect the drivetrain if you hit rocks or stumps. This style of mower is effective for cutting down material, but the way it chews up the matter isn’t consistent. The mower will chop some of the material into small pieces while lopping some off at the base. The lopped-off grass will fall to the ground and the mower will pass over it, so you could have some pieces of mowed material that are 3 or 4 feet long, depending on the height of what you’re cutting.

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