I really need to hit the yard work....HARD.

I've done a bunch of weeding. Yesterday I trimmed on of the line of hedges on the side of the the house. It was really overgrown. A lot of the shrubs and flowers are also over grown.

I'm having a lawn service stop by this evening to get a quote.

Normally I am not a fan of paying someone to so this. I like getting dirty. But I'm trying to figure out if it is worth paying someone to do it short term while we buy all the other tools we need.

One of the items that came with the house was a 25HP Lawn Tractor. I have a monster lawn tractor, but no trimmer or push mower. And we have a lot of other things to focus time on these days.

If and when I opt to buy stuff what brands do you all recommend?

Thoughts?

 

Get an Echo string trimmer.

 

My stihl trimmer was about $300 and was one of the best purchases I ever made. When we moved from next door of my parents, I left all my lawn implements with my dad including my $8k Kubota zero turn. He has almost 2 acres and I have a pretty smallish yard. I inherited a landscaper guy with the new house. I love coming home from a long/ day night at work to a manicured yard. I'd rather work on the thousand other projects I have going on.

 

I'm doing something wrong.

 

I love my Ryobi one+ items. I have the edger, trimmer and blower. They all run on the same battery, so with 3 batteries I never have a problem running out of power. It's just nice not to mess with gas.

 

We had a yard service come by and did an estimate. He came back with $1500 for everything including the mulching He estimated 12 scoops of mulch.

He said it would be $250 for cleaning up the flower bed in the back and trimming the hedges and mowing.

We opted to do the work ourselves. I'll have to post some pics of the flower bed. It looks a lot better. I also mowed on Saturday. Took about an hour or so. I still need to get a string cutter to do the edges.

It looks a lot better. I'm going to wait until the end of September or so to do the rest of the trimming. I don't want to do it while it is so hot.

We'll order mulch (NOT 12 SCOOPS) some time in September as well.

 

If you're not going to finish until the fall. Don't order the mulch until the start of next spring. It'll be easy to work the beds for next season.

 

Do you have annual or perennial flowers? If u have annuals you MUST lay the mulch by the fall, you can't wait until spring. The mulch will protect the bulbs from freezing over winter. If they are perennial, then u can wait to spring as u will have to re-plant anyway.

If found thru my trials & tribulations (and advice from both my newly highered landscapers and neighbors with perfect yards lol) that you do not want to skimp on the mulch. We decided last spring to get the rubber mulch which was a hell of a lot more expensive than the organic kind. Well being so expensive i said, ehh the bag says 1-3" so I'll do 1. BIG mistake. The weeds sprouting thru are ridiculous and have tried to take over my extremely over priced greenery. Plus, its just that much more work to pull.

 

When you say scoops do you mean yards? Find a mulch calculator online, measure your mulch bed and see how many cubic yards it says you need. My backyard needs around 8-9 yards.

 

You've got that back wards, missy.

Perennials come back every year; annuals need to be replanted every year.

So if you have perennials, you can help protect them with mulch or ....






.... you can live in Carolina where it doesn't usually doesn't get cold enough to worry about that.

 

^A man who knows his flowers . And not only do mild winters help with not having to protect perennials, but you can perennialize your annuals. My grandmother basically made her impatiens perennials by cutting them close to the ground in the fall and covering them with the leaves that fell from the giant oaks in the yard. Come spring, she just took the leaves up, and the impatiens started growing again. If you have annuals you like, I'd say give this, or something similar, a shot. If they make it, you save some time and money in the spring; if not, you're not out anything for trying.

 

A man who knows his etymology and word roots.


And the difference between a Carolina winter and a PA winter.

 

My apologies, it was 1:35am and i was half asleep LOL
Unfortunately i do have to worry about that tho :/ i just got a booklet about "end of summer gardening " from my homeowners association today saying i have to add 3 inches of organic mulch by the end of September to prevent winter damage, or im getting a citation. Ugh. I am becoming less & less of a fan of having an HOA everyday. Lol

 

our HOA got on us HARD about landscaping.

 

I can only imagine i really didn't have much of a choice, i wanted to be in this school zone and all of the homes outside of my subdivision are mucho denero. A bunch of Nascar drivers live by me in multi-million dollar homes. This was my only option since my husband & i decided it would be best for me to stop working (all 3 of my children were special needs at one point) and with only 1 income i was afraid to have a mortgage and couldn't afford more than $200k. I didn't think it'd be so bad, brand new construction and promises of "protecting the investment " with their rules, but its been a bunch of tickets and rising HOA fees. They justify this last increase by using it to turn one of our pools an indoor pool but i much rather keep my money LoL.

Anyway, straying from topic... have you considered having a 1 time deal from a landscaper to winterize your yard, doing any seeding/germicide/etc? Sometimes they offer deals end of summer to have the extra business since their off season is coming.

 

I've heard nothing but horrible things about HOAs. I'll never be caught dead living in a sub-division though, so no worries

 

I'd rather shove a pen in my eye than live somewhere with an HOA. I'll be damned if somebody tells me what to do with MY home that I'M paying for.

 

i hear ya on that! Trust me, lesson learned. I've begun my new & improved "5 yr plan" and as soon as all my kids are school age im going back to work at least part time & buying a house outside of HOA boundaries even if it ends up costing a million dollars more LOL. I wish that i would have heard the horror stories about them BeFORE i had my own horror stories to share lol

 

Ill just keep working at it. Nothing this week though. We're on vacation.

 

I have a lot of Ryobi one+ items, didn't know they have an edger and trimmer, I have the leaf blower, but it's pretty weak

And I hate yard work, I have a bad back and I'm allergic to grass. My lawn guy charges me $30 to cut it, it's worth every penny

 

Popular Mech recommended the Stihl

 

+1 on the Stihl trimmer. Starts on 3 pulls every time and does a great job.

 

http://www.ryobitools.com/catalog/18...utdoor_oneplus

 

I just bought a Honda 25cc 4-stroke string trimmer a few weekends ago. I got it due to the non gas and oil mixture. You just chane the oil regularly like on a car. It was 358 out the door but it's worth it to me. Quiet and starts on the 1st pull. Also i believe it's the only trimmer that's rated as a "green" trimmer.

 

after extensive weekends in the front yard;
the HOA reviewed our case, and closed it!

 

^^Did you not mow for a year or what?

 

^no, Idiots at HOA just nit picking....

"your plants are to close to your house" etc.

 

Wow, that pretty anal. I've only been there 3 weeks but hopefully my HOA leaves me alone.

 

That figures, I don't have the lithiums

 

I have a craftsman 4 cycle string trimmer. It is one where i have to manually put the string in it because i am too stupid to operate the automatic ones. I have had it for about 6 years now and it works very well and like others, you don't have to mix the oil and gas. What a pain in the dick that is. I use the black line that comes in a spool. I get it when it goes on sale/clearance and it's pretty thick.
If you go this route, i'll give you a spool of it. The one i have now has lasted me 5-6 years and i ahve an extra one.

There are a few mulch places around that will be about $25-30 per yard/scoop. A scoop here is smaller than a yard so adjust prices accordingly.

There is a place off of the wrightsville exit that might deliver to you but i'd wait until spring to mulch. The stuff you have is established and isn't going anywhere, just my opinion.

I would get an electric hedge trimmer with a longer cutting blade so you can reach over those tall bushes easier. You don't have to spend a ton of money on one, but don't skimp. Again, sears or lowes for this.

Get Elliot a small rake to rake the leaves too, he'll enjoy that for a minute. Or get some beer and invite the neighbors for leaf clean-up.

 

Beware of buying too much weedeater string in bulk. I remember my Dad and uncles telling me this long ago. I'm not saying it's all like this, or still like this even. Just what I've heard!

 

If you have the black and blue ones then the lithium batteries work with both sets. I have the normal flashlight and I use the lithium batteries in it.

 

I have an electric hedge trimmer from the old owners of the house. I picked up a Troy Bilt trimmer from Lowes. I used it a couple weeks ago to trim and edge. Very easy to work.

Mowing is a breeze. I'm still planning out a nice route so I can get some nice lines. But with the mower it takes me about 45 minutes.

I have found that avoiding Round Up is just dumb.

I opted to just mulch the front walks from the driveway to the door. I just did bags since I don't have a wheel barrow right now. I'll get one next year. It took about 24 bags but it's all done.

My roses look great. They are blooming like crazy. There are also a ton of bulbs in the front walkway. That's why I opted to mulch. I didn't want them freezing. They are all springing up right now and the garden shop said to let them spring so I can figure out what the hell they are.

I won't be doing anything nuts for the next couple weeks. In October I'll trim the hedges and roses back a bit for the winter. All I'm doing is mowing.



In the fall the real fun begins. 17 trees in my yard and about the same in the neighbor's.