Buying First Zero Turn or Stand on Mower...HELP

bertsmobile1

Lawn Royalty
Joined
Nov 29, 2014
Threads
64
Messages
24,647
My workshop is on the rural fringe , rapidly becoming urban of Sydney. I see this a lot where 1000 acres suddenly becomes 100 x 10 acre hobby farms / rural retreats.
The quality of the soil is very much dependent upon the philosophy of the farmer and weather they practiced chemical farming , seed + fertilizer = crop or regeneraive farming Graze crop fallow graze .
Lots of old school croppers just put the same crop in year in year out and ever increasing amounts of super.
Even worse they used the same mounds & drainage ditches so the soil becomes compacted and in particular the sub soil becomes compacted into corrogotions .
The old ditches hold water so the grass is always greener and grows quicker but the spots where the tops of the mounds have been removed drain quicker & die off at the slightest water shortage / heat wave.
Not a problem with lots of 5 acres or less because the developers usually scalp all of the top soil off the block and level before building then buy in new soil before the sale date .

So the owners of the problem blocks spend a fortune every year deep punching and knife slitting plus top dressing and ferterlising because they wanted an "instant lawn " and did not do the ground work to improve the soil first.
Add to that the old poor soils seem to forever be invaded by every lawn pest know to man and some not even known .
Good grass needs to be in sandy LOAM with at lest 20% organic matter .
If they were growing corn successfully then you will be looking at hot dry summers and unless there is good water retention you are looking at hundreds to thousands of gallons of water weekly ( do you have dam ? ) during the hot dry months . So plowing in tons of charcoal will greatly aid the water retention without making the ground swampy .
Soaking the charcoal in trace elements before plowing in will keep the trace elements available for decades .
Bio char is really just a wank and while it does improve the soil and in particular the fungial & bacterial content it is nothing like the hype the self appointed planet savers make it out to be .
Soil chemistry & biology has streaked away over the past 20 years but the old timers just kept on doing what their daddy did and the idea that there is more plant life under the soil than on top is totally foreign to them .
If I was in your shoes, the last thing I would be looking fro right now would be a striping ZTR, that comes in much latter.
Right now it is a sub- compact tractor , or stand on combination machine like small landscapers use . You can pick them up with all the gear, bucket, back -hoe, cultivator, post hole digger, cement mixet fork blades eic quie cheap second hand in the USA then flog it off when you have finished.
Build the house, lay out the house garden then work the rest of the soil from the house out to the boundary over a 3 to 6 year time frame to slowly create your lawn .

Otherwise you will end up a slave to 2 acres of weeds.
Also consider the strip & replace method preferred by the local property developers .
Soil retailers will usually do you a deal , particularly if they can strip off 12" or better the replace it with 1/2 the amount of top quality lawn loam.
FWIW, the farm my work shop is on is just under 1000 acres and the 3 of us mow it using 3 x 2000 series Cubs , mind you it is real pasture not striped lawn.
I mow 2 to 3 acres of road side verge with a variety of tractor mowers , mostly locally made ones from 24" 8Hp out front slasher ( goes under the bottom wire on he fence ) to a 36" 10Hp tractor
All of hem are better than 40 years old.
 
Last edited:
Top