I think run time is mostly associated with battery type. My trimmer is light weight and best for medium to lite whacking. I also have to change my battery depending on how long I use it. One advantage is the huge quantity of different tools ryobi carries with 18v.
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One other thing I forgot to mention is that the mower came with a grass catcher bag.
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My orchard is far too uneven to use any kind of mower. I’ve been using gas brushcutters, but they keep getting ruined by not being stored properly. They also threw a lot of rocks around, and can be dangerous if they catch on some twine or something that wraps around the head and yanks it out into something. I just found out you can get all kinds of weed eater attachments for them. I’m looking at getting a decent Makita 18 V brush cutter. But recently I am gardening at night, so even this may be pushing the noise for the neighbors. I started using an olde school sickle, and I actually really like it. It’s really good exercise and silent.
I think the best would be a powerful electric string line weedeater. Then I could drop it on the deck and it will give a nice clean cut right on the dirt.
The Roundup idea sounds easiest, but that would freak me out putting that much herbicide in the garden.
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Now that I mow around our fruit trees, we have about 3 acres that slope from back to front. Even with the 48in Husqvarna rider, it now takes me about 3 hours. Lots of trees, plants, and other obstacles to mow around makes for a long day. Lately I’ve been doing the upper yard and orchard one day and the lower yard and orchard the next. If I fill it up (3gal), I can sometimes mow all of it on one tank.
All our newer fruit trees are enclosed by a circular fence. Sometimes I can get around the fences in one circular sweep, but most of them require a couple more passes. That Husqy can turn pretty good in tight spaces.
My wife does the harder work of spot mowing with the pusher, and does the weed-eating as well. We have an 8 year old gasoline Craftsman pusher, and have a Stihl gas powered weed whacker. It does a good job, but she has issues getting the line to advance on it.
Our grass is very lush, and thick, so it can gom up the mower quickly with the mulching blades on it. I’m tempted to put the original blades back on it. My problem is that I wait too long in between mowings, like every ten days or so. I should cut it more often.
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Mower looks nice bill. I started purchasing Ridgid tools with lithium batteries. They have a lifetime battery warranty from Home Depot. I have an 18" drill and impact driver and they are great.
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Impact drivers are nice. I used the ryobi version to drive all the screws into my deck/screen porch. A charged up battery would last me a half day with off and on use. It has been one of my most frequently used cordless tools.
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Agreed. Lithium batteries are great, I have a Dewalt drill, impact driver, and recip saw that run on 20V Li batteries. Impact drivers amaze me the way they work. They are loud little buggers when they kick in…
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I got a Greenworks 40v lithium-ion dual blade 20" mower this spring and love it! Being long time “solar” folks (we got our first PV panels 40 yrs ago) I’ve long wanted a decent battery/electric mower. I had an early small Husqvarna urban-suited mower that I used when i could but it was hardly suited to my backwoods homestead needs. They’ve come a LONG way since then. The GW can handle fairly tall grass, it cuts well, the batteries last as long as I want to mow at a time and charge fast, the bagger is small but easy so I use it more than I normally would (dumping the clippings on whatever tree I happen to be near). It’s relatively easy/light for pushing.
For heavy duty use I have a regular walk behind Husqvarna gas mower which is a great workhorse, being often asked to mow more brush than lawn. For driveway and outbuilding type mowing my husband has an old JohnDeere rider. It doesn’t go inside the orchard/garden fence.
As I’m not a big fan of mowing when I expanded my orchard area I went to laying out a track from tree to tree (or bush or whatever), mowing up one side and down the other, and in/out or around individuals as necessary. Much easier with the lighter Greenworks than heavy Husqvarna. Nothing is laid out in straight rows (except the garden area in the middle) so it’s a winding route which I like. Areas inbetween are left to grow unless there’s something in particular I want to mow down. Young trees/bushes are mulched, bearing trees are grassed (roughly speaking–the orchard growth is very mixed). I keep an wide mowed border around the garden, and paths wherever I walk a lot.
We did buy the Greenworks stringtrimmer, too, which I’ve used a little and It seems to work fine but in general I don’t care for string trimmers and haven’t anything to compare it to.
A maybe uncommon tool that I use under bearing trees when the undergrowth gets too tall (like this year of incessant rain) is an austrian style scythe. Kept sharp this tool is easy, fast, quiet and as long as you don’t have an overmuch stuff to mow is plain fun to use. It’s an occasional but very appreciated tool.
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Your Greenworks mower looks like the top of the line cordless mower.
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Ryobi has a battery powered riding mower but it does not use a lithium battery.
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It’s also $2700. Yikes!
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Actually, we got the discontinued model. They have a likely better one now. But we got this one on clearance price which was nice. Likely quite similar to the Ryobi.Pretty handy tools.
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I wonder if putting landscape fabric or something similar directly around the tree areas would make all the fiddly time-consuming mowing easier?
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That looks like the ticket. How do you apply fertilizers? Are there any other issues with maintenance?
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I agree. If I had to do it over I would be thought more about the spacing on my trees when I planted them. And the fence surrounding them as well. I could probably get the Gravely down the tree rows okay bit definitely not between the trees and the fence. My orchard is small enough its not that bad using a pusher.
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All I use is nitrogen. That gets spread on the fabric and watered in.
Mine is getting old and frayed. That pictured is probably about 10 yrs in place. It gets frayed and weeds start to move in. It’s not good for the soil as there is little organic material added. But I’m old and I’ll be gone soon. THen someone else can do it there way. At least the soil doesn’t wash or blow away both risks here.
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Me too, bro, me too. Tired too!
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Thanks. That’s very interesting. I hope you can enjoy your time there.
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This is one of my two mowers (the other is a Fiskars reel mower). As mentioned above, an austrian scythe is quiet, fun to use, easy to maintain, works wonderfully on grass that has got too tall for other mowers, and gets great fuel efficiency 
I cut my front yard and the edges of the backyard with it, as well as cut down grain and strawberry plants. Only workable for smallish total area unless you are very dedicated, and probably depending on the type of grasses and vegetation getting cut. I got mine from Scythe Supply in Maine. Fun for the kids too!
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