It’s too hot to mow.

[chim]

I mowed after lunch today. Temps were a bit over 90° and 50%+ humidity. It was a real blessing to open the mailbox late this AM and see that the pulley for the Caroni mower had arrived! Ordered online (AgriSupply) Sunday, it showed up in the mail today. Last time mowing there was an odd screeching from the deck. Turned out to be a pulley that had worked loose, damaged the keyway and "wallered out" the bore. I have some extra spindles but couldn't find the pulleys that I KNOW are somewhere. I was only too happy to fix the deck and mow in the cabbed tractor with the 7-1/2' deck instead of the open station with the 5' deck.

There were times when my schedule kept me from mowing in daylight. There were a couple years when it was well into the mowing season till lights were no longer necessary. The Caroni decks handle moisture better than the two LandPride decks I had. Dew just kinda shows up on short notice after dark. It can be anywhere between sunset and a couple hours later. With the LandPride decks it was about time to quit when the front tires got wet looking.

 

[wolc123]

Bush-hogging my fields, under the hottest of summer suns is one of my favorite jobs, way up here near the Canadian border. This is the time of year when I do most of that.

Open-field running, in 6th gear at pto-rpm, puts a nice steady breeze across my face. I have a big home-made, canvas over wood frame canopy, that keeps me in the shade. I drop my bucket to get rid of the front end bounce and improve clearance and forward visibility.

You couldn’t pay me to do that in a cab tractor with AC. I work 45-50 hours a week, in a climate controlled factory, and I cherish my outdoors time.

Here is my Bush-hogging setup:

Notice the little patch of early sweetcorn in our front yard behind the tractor. I put it there for multiple reasons (after getting permission from my wife).

1) I don’t care for lawn mowing and that corn cut our acre of lawn down to 3/4, saving me at least 15 minutes each time I mow.

2) That section of lawn was very rough, always forcing me to go real slow with my hydrostatic riding mower. It needed to be plowed, disked and re-graded and seeded anyhow.

I plowed it in April and I’ll finish the job in late August after the corn is harvested. They call that “double cropping”. That is the best time of year to plant a new lawn.

3) We had a 4-week long June drought this year. There is no better looking sweet corn (or field corn) in our town right now. I was able to nurse that little 1/4 acre thru it with a lawn sprinkler and short garden hose. The surrounding big fields got pretty parched.

1/2 hour of city water, every other late afternoon thru that stretch, did wonders. That corn is chest-high now and starting to tassel.

4) Coons usually get most of my early sweetcorn, when I plant it out back. It will be easier for me to trap them up front and what I can’t can’t catch might be taken out by vehicular road traffic.

5) My wife and kids always complain about having to go way out back to harvest the corn. Now they can pick it on their way to the mailbox.

And to think, my neighbors thought I was crazy when they seen me out there plowing up our front yard.

 

[John0829]

I see your using the best tractor for plowing.

 

[wolc123]

I see your using the best tractor for plowing.

It’s easier to hold a constant depth with that one, because it has draft control on the hydraulics.

Soil conditions and moisture content were just about perfect here this spring. Some years, when it’s been a little on the wet side, I have used my 4wd JD 4120 on that little 2 x 12” plow. That will pull it without any wheel spin, fully engaged, thru mud holes with standing water. It’s kind of cool watching the wakes roll off of the plow shares.

That little 8n has always been great on the plow. The tires are original and both rears were loaded with calcium on the original rims.

A few years ago, when the furrow side rim rusted thru. I lost all the calcium from that side. I removed the original tire , that was still good, and put it in a new rim with a new tube. I did not load it.

I was worried how it would pull that plow, with just the sod side rear tire loaded. Much to my surprise, it pulls that plow better than ever like that. Traction is better on the furrow side, so not being loaded now equalizes the pull force, and I don’t get any wheel spin on the sod side.

It now pulls that plow easily in 2nd gear, while from 1951 until 2020, the original owner and I had to use 1st gear on the plow.

It no longer works as well on my two row cultivator though, pulling to one side a little. I now use the 4wd JD for that job which has both loaded rears.

I did use the 8n on the cultivator last week though, because I didn’t feel like taking the Bush-hog off the JD. It worked ok, because there was plenty of moisture in the ground from lots of recent rain, so the pull was easy.

 

[Lineman North Florida]

It was 100+ today when I finished up this little mowing project for a customer, towards the end I noticed my little open station tractor running a little warmer than normal.

 

[Complete Turf Care]

I firmly believe that here along the gulf coast is the most brutal summer weather in the country. Dewpoint is a very good measure of comfort, or misery.
When dewpoints reach 70*, it is miserable outside. Lately we have had dewpoints in the upper 70's all day long and even reached 80* a few times

I did hook up my 60 hp Kubota Grand L6060 to my 6' Trimax mower last week and cut most of my 4 acres with it.

It is nice to have a 60hp air conditioned lawn mower, but it can be difficult to maneuver around low tree limbs. I do get on the 60" zero turn for the trim work.

 

[Lineman North Florida]

I firmly believe that here along the gulf coast is the most brutal summer weather in the country. Dewpoint is a very good measure of comfort, or misery.
When dewpoints reach 70*, it is miserable outside. Lately we have had dewpoints in the upper 70's all day long and even reached 80* a few times

I did hook up my 60 hp Kubota Grand L6060 to my 6' Trimax mower last week and cut most of my 4 acres with it.

It is nice to have a 60hp air conditioned lawn mower, but it can be difficult to maneuver around low tree limbs. I do get on the 60" zero turn for the trim work.

I believe it was August-September of 2020 I was in Lafayette for about a week then in Vinton for about 3 weeks working to get power back on after a hurricane and those 3 weeks in Vinton were miserable, it reminded me of home, maybe a little worse, I remember telling somebody that I was pretty sure that Vinton Louisiana might be 1/4 mile closer to hell as hot as it was.

 

[WM75Guy]

I firmly believe that here along the gulf coast is the most brutal summer weather in the country. Dewpoint is a very good measure of comfort, or misery.
When dewpoints reach 70*, it is miserable outside. Lately we have had dewpoints in the upper 70's all day long and even reached 80* a few times

I did hook up my 60 hp Kubota Grand L6060 to my 6' Trimax mower last week and cut most of my 4 acres with it.

It is nice to have a 60hp air conditioned lawn mower, but it can be difficult to maneuver around low tree limbs. I do get on the 60" zero turn for the trim work.

Once the humidity reaches 70% sweating is no longer an effective means of cooling the body. Couple that with high temps and it gets pretty bad. We could tell those days in the ED and on the ambulance by the number of heat cases that came in.

 

[Complete Turf Care]

You can see in the image below that our current condition at 8:53 pm show the temp at 86, the dew point at 79 and the humidity at 80 which puts our heat index at 100. Brutal…

 

[ruffdog]

Strange year here as we are in a drought. The grass tuned brown a month ago and stopped growing so we don't mow anymore. I have noticed the thistle and ragweed are even drying up. This is not good for crops!