In the fall, after it was too late for any significant regrowth, I rented a brush hog and mowed the tall grass and small shrubs that had grown up in the lawns, field, and garden areas. I was determined to accomplish the task with only one day’s rental expense, but that goal was hard to meet. I quickly discovered that the brush hog, though self-propelled, required a great deal of effort to steer around the obstacles, which numbered more greatly than I had estimated. By the end of the day, I felt as though I had finished a triathlon.
This spring, we discovered that the cuttings did not significantly decompose during the winter and found that raking the thick layer of dried vegetation off the ground would require great effort. The material has almost felted itself into a continuous sheet that must be torn apart for removal. I decided to rent a dethatching machine in the hope that it would simplify the task of raking.
The machine was not too heavy, but was not self-propelled. While I was using it on the lawns it was not difficult at all. However, in the garden and field areas it was significantly more difficult. Every time I got to a shrub stump, soft ground, thick layer of thatch, or a depression, the machine had to be twisted and shoved from a different awkward angle to move on.
The machine weighed 3 or 4 times as much as a lawn mower and the efforts added up. Fortunately, the rental store doesn’t charge for Sundays. So, I was able to rent it on Saturday and return it Monday morning for the cost of a 1-day rental. The extra free day meant that I could divide the task across two days and take breaks between portions. I am still a bit sore from the contortions, but did not get nearly as tired as I did when using the brush hog.
A disappointment came when I realized the dethatcher does nothing to gather to material it breaks free. I asked about that when I rented the machine and was told it would leave the material in a row. That is literally true, but it would have been nice to know that the row would be the exact width of the area the machine rolls over.
The lawn areas still had to be raked, but the task was far easier to accomplish. I started raking the thatch into a stack, but the volume I gathered was large enough to inform me that windrows were a better choice.
These windrows will be gathered into a stack and saved for when I need bedding in the outdoor chicken pen or when I rebuild the biomeiler.
The garden and field areas might not require raking. The dethatcher broke up the dried material well enough that I can probably till it into the soil. We aren’t fans of tilling, but the soil hasn’t been touched for years and is too hard for the cutter on my seeder to open up the soil.
Your garden area looks so vast! I can only imagine you struggling with the awkwardness of the brush hog and dethatcher machines.
May you be rewarded with a good supply of material for the pens and biomiler.
We haven’t measured it in the last few years, but it was about 200′ at the longest and about 50′ at the widest.
The long south side is fairly straight and it makes a right angle with the west side, but the rest is irregular.
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