Push reel mowers on wood chips?

Orogogus

Part of my back yard is laid with wood chips, and after some rains last year and this year an astoundingly thick lawn has grown out of it with zero effort on my part. It's getting kind of tall now, maybe 6 inches high, and I was wondering how I should go about cutting it, especially since the ground underneath is wood chips and not just dirt. Would a manual push reel mower work? I read reviews saying they're not good at dealing with twigs and small debris, but I can just cut higher up so I don't hit the wood chips, can't I?

The whole area is maybe 15 x 10', which seems like it might be too much to attack with a weed whacker.

bowen

If you try wear safety gear.

It might work. Probably won't depending on the height of the woodchips.

knitdan

A manual (non-powered! This is important!) mower might work in the short term but the grass is going to keep coming back now that it’s established.

Unfortunately your best bet is to dig up the wood chips and start over in that section.

DO NOT run a powered mower over wood chips. That’s just asking for trouble.

dispatch.o

You could try covering the entire area with heavy black plastic / burlap / tarp to kill everything, but that takes a while. We used to do it to spots in our gravel landscaping growing up. It always seemed temporary though.

Donovan Puppyfucker

Rake up the wood chips, mow the grass as short as you can.

Donovan Puppyfucker

Also, 15 foot by 10 foot is by no means too much area to have a crack at with a line trimmer (weed whacker), but it will pick up the chips and fling them about, possibly breaking windows. If you have access to a mower like this:

you can set it to mow at its lowest possible height without directly hitting the ground setup with the mulching plug in the back and no bag on it, and it'll mow the grass and make a hell of a racket thrashing the woodchips, but it won't throw them outside the body of the mower. It'll definitely blunten the blades though, so hire one or buy your mate that lent it to you a new set of blades once you're done.

L Ron Howard

There's no way you're cutting the grass with a reel mower. I used a reel mower for years on my tiny lot. Once the grass got long, it becomes humanly impossible to cut. There's no way in hell that the mower could cut anything more than 3 or 4 inches on a good day. And if it's wet, it's not cutting shit. You're not likely to eat up the chips, but I've never seen a reel mower cut tall and/or thick grass.

You should rake up the chips. You can go to any hardware store and rent a deck mower from them for a few hours and get it done. And then stay on top of it!

Delzhand

A reel mower will hard stop on a single wood chip. Not only is it an inconvenience, it tires you out faster because you take the shock through your arms and lose all forward momentum. Then you gotta go pick out whatever stopped you.

L Ron Howard

Yeah, I forgot to include what happens when you do run over anything.

Orogogus

Well, I had a go at it with a weed whacker over the weekend. It worked... okay. The grass is shorter, but it's not particularly even. Good enough, though.

I can try borrowing a rake to see if raking up the wood chips will be an option, but this grass is really absurdly thick. I guess I could buzz the grass as short as possible and then giving it a try, but I was trying to avoid hitting the ground.

For reference, this is what it looked like before the weed whacker:



The stuff just grew absurdly fast out of nowhere. Last year we had some rain in San Diego, and some wild grass grew up and released a jillion foxtails all over my yard, and apparently this is the result.

Donovan Puppyfucker

Oh yeah, a regular mower would eat that easily. Then yo just go around the edges with the weed whacker and let it grow into a lawn?

Enc

If you want to get rid of it, you need to do the following:

• Put down trash bags over it for a week to suffocate the grass dead.
• Buy a 4 tine potato rake (like this: https://www.grainger.com/product/32MJ61?cm_mmc=PPC:+Google+PLA&s_kwcid=AL!2966!3!50916699597!!!g!82166408517!&ef_id=WqFtXQAAAJI9vwsP:20180319182046:s)
• Pull the whole damn thing up
• Put down some herbicide. That area is small enough some roundup will work, but keep in mind that crabgrass and other plants are tenacious and will come back. Your best bet is to take a few minutes each week to weed.

Trust me when I say that a push mower is a mistake. Also in that I have experience in tearing up unwanted plant matter. #encmire

ArbitraryDescriptor

chrishallett83 wrote: »

Oh yeah, a regular mower would eat that easily. Then yo just go around the edges with the weed whacker and let it grow into a lawn?

If you get a regular mower, consider going for a corded electric. It looks like the cord management won't even be a concious thought if you're just mowing the perimeter of a 10' patio; and maintenance seems more annoying on an infrequently/lightly used gas mower. Old gas, etc.

Really just the old gas, I guess.


Edit: Also, if you routinely let it get long, electric motors don't choke out on thick patches like gas motors do. They just slow down for a second.

Delzhand

With a patch of land that small, I can see why you don't want to get a mower. Yeah honestly, I'd just attack that with a weed whacker every so often too.

MichaelLC

That looks like better lawn then where I'm trying to grow grass. Maybe I should put a layer of wood chips down...

If you end up getting a mower, take a look at the electric ones. They're pretty good.

Orogogus

Some "After" shots. The grass isn't really kempt, but it's better:




I think it looks better than the wood chips, so I guess I'll let it be as long as it doesn't start making more foxtails, and if it dies then I'll dig it up. I kind of wonder if there's a leak somewhere, though, since I was under the impression that grass normally needs a lot of watering.

Bonus in-progress shot: My cat wanted to come play with the power tools, but I wouldn't let him.

mts

Orogogus wrote: »

Some "After" shots. The grass isn't really kempt, but it's better:




I think it looks better than the wood chips, so I guess I'll let it be as long as it doesn't start making more foxtails, and if it dies then I'll dig it up. I kind of wonder if there's a leak somewhere, though, since I was under the impression that grass normally needs a lot of watering.

Bonus in-progress shot: My cat wanted to come play with the power tools, but I wouldn't let him.

In addition to power tools, foxtails are bad news for pets

bowen

wait there's wood chips under that??

Shit man a mower will tear through that in general. I'd be surprised if the wood chips even exist anymore.

Grass doesn't need a lot of watering, only grass in regions where it's not really conducive to grow grass because of the climate (deserts mostly). But in most places you can get away not watering so long as you're not in a drought.

Orogogus

Ya. When I say the grass grew out of nowhere, this is what it looked like in November:



You can tell there are wood chips under there when you walk on it. But the grass was really, really thick; passing the weed whacker through it was like BRRRRRRRRRRRP.

San Diego and most of Southern California has been in a drought, but we did get some rain last week and are expecting more this week. Oddly, this was the only patch of my backyard where the vines weren't able to take hold. I'd always assumed this side didn't get enough shade and the scorching midday sun was killing all the plant life. I guess I'll see once we get another heat wave.

The back corner of the yard has some other plants growing in it, which look for all the world like catnip, but neither of my cats have shown any interest. Oh, well.

EDIT: The foxtails were the worst. All over everything all the time, and I had to brush them out of the cats' fur every time I let them in the yard. They were everywhere in San Diego last year, but I'll concrete over my whole yard before I let them grow out a second time.

Derrick

I think you should get a reel mower. I've been using one for years and years in more difficult terrain than that. You can adjust the height, and from the pictures, I doubt the wood chips at the bottom will be any sort of problem.

knitdan

When you’re saying wood chips do you by any chance mean bark? Those look awful dark for The wood chips I’m familiar with.

dispatch.o

Wood chips and bark eventually become dirt, you have to put more down every few years (or more often if the climate helps break them down).

It doesn't look bad though, that space is small enough you could just tarp it and throw some bricks on top to keep the tarp down and it would be gone in a couple weeks in summer, though you definitely need more ground covering or a plan because it would come back.

Thro

knitdan wrote: »

When you’re saying wood chips do you by any chance mean bark? Those look awful dark for The wood chips I’m familiar with.

Mine look like that, but I technically have 'wood mulch'. Which is (mostly) just chopped up sticks.

Orogogus

Oh, it's totally bark. They called them wood chips when I bought the house, but it's bark.

Donovan Puppyfucker

Okay yeah, you can totally just mow right over bark mulch with a regular rotary mower, that ain't shit. Still wouldn't use a reel mower though. Does your local gas station or hardware store hire out mowers?