Lawnmower Doesn't Cut It
 

I had a thread last year about the lawnmower bogging down in the back yard at the new house. The recomendation was made to sharpen the mower, blade, which I did, and it got rid of the bogging problem. I now have to sharpen the blade every week.

The problem now is that the grass is so dense in the back yard, that even if it only grows an inch or two, I have to re-mow the same spot 2-3 times to grind up the mulch and not leave piles that will kill the grass.

The mowever is a Craftsman unit with a Honda engine. 5.5 HP with a 21" blade. I bought it in 2004 and it works fine. I change the oil once a year. I never had any problems mulching the grass at the old house. I recently bought a brand new, special mulching blade and it hardly made a difference.

It's funny because at my old house, we had small lots and half the people owned a riding mower. At the new house, the lots are over twice the size and none of the neighbors own a riding mower.

I just want to be able to only mow each section of lawn once and have the mulch finely cut and evenly dispersed.

Should I consider getting a mower with a higher HP rating? Do they make twin-blade push mowers that don't cost thousands of dollars?

I know it's twice the work, but try overlapping only half of your previous cut. Work up to the most efficient amount of cut you can make on each pass.

Easier: look for a used riding mower on CL.

How do you feel about sheep?

I'm already doing that. I still have to go back and re-mow and addtional 1-2 times after that.

(rant: logging in to PP for the tenth time today, because internet connection was "changed")

Purchase a "multching" blade for $30 with winglets at the ends to kick up the clippings.

I mow lawns with a weed eater (strimmer) then rake the cut grass away. Sure I wouldn't mow a bowling club quality lawn with it but anything less I do.

Increase your HP/ width of cut or you could always borrow my Ford 8N with my Woods belly mover. 72" of cut baby!

I tried push mowing my MIL lawn and was blown away at how hard it was to do and the fact the darn thing always bogged down. What a PITA.

I thought you bought a house with acreage?

Speedy:)

I had the same issue and have come to the conclusion that I have to give up on the mulching op. Sounds like your mower is probably the same as my Craftsman. Try wedging up your side outlet cover half way and I bet you find like I did that the bogging down instantly goes away.

I've pretty much resigned myself to needing to install a bag catcher or getting another mower specifically set up for mulching. I hate side bags and my mower will accomodate a rear bag as well. I'll probably end up going to a rear bag.

Nope. The house I wanted had acreage but also had some expensive maintenance coming up. We ended up at a place about 2 miles south of where we were before. Bigger yard, bigger house, smaller garage.

Since you have to go over it a number of times, maybe you could set the height up a notch of two and lower it with the next pass. You'll still have to go over it more than once, but since you'd be only cutting it down a portion of an inch each time, the passes would be easier & do a better job at cutting and dispersing the mulch.

You want to look for a toro super recycler. The deck and blade design is optimized for mulching. As a plus, the personal pace power drive is beyond awesome. You want to look for the cast aluminum deck models, not the stamped steel ones they sell at home depot, you really need to go to a dealer. They may even be able to let you "test drive" one to see how well it works on your lawn and how well you like it.
I would not give up on using my old Honda HR214SX because it still ran. I had the optional mulching blade, but even so, I had to mulch using the lower speed on the power drive. Even so, it the grass was heavy it would clump up.
A work colleague was moving back to France and had to get rid of his 5 or 6 year old toro, so I picked it up real cheap. I can't believe how much faster I can get the lawn done with the toro. More power, faster power drive, and it blasts through mulching even heavy grass with ease. The Honda bags better, so I'll use it in the fall for leaf pickup, but for normal mowing it's the toro.

The mower is at the maximum height. I don't have any higher to go!

Chris, try using the side discharge chute with the mulching blade... it will probably disperse the clippings fairly thinly, plus if your lawn is so healthy that it is fighting your efforts that much, it's probably not going to suffer much from some half-mulched clippings.

Yep, that exactly what I just installed.

I'll give this a try. Seriously, the back yard is ridiculously healthy.

Let's try to keep this thread clean please.

5+HP spinning a sub 4ft blade across grass tips should be plenty sufficient.

Something else in play there.
Change the oil, gas, air filter, and/or spark plug if needed. Never had good luck with Champion.

You clearly need more power. I'm surprised no one has suggested adding a turbo or a nitrous injector to hit when the mower bogs down. Of course you could wimp out and bolt on a 7.5 horsepower engine, but where's the challenge there? I wouldn't go over 2 litres na or a 1 litre forced induction motor for a 21" mower though. You don't want to overdo it - wait, you can't overdo horsepower. Nevermind that.

22's....

What kind of grass is it?

I would stop mulching and just bag it.