“Landscaping” at Curmudgeon Compound isn’t really landscaping. Nothing was ever graded, or seeded, or really anything. (Putting down sod would be hilarious out here!)
My “lawn” is basically cow pasture that was mowed on and off for several decades after the cows were gone. It’s a de facto lawn. There has never been a single thought put into anything other than dragging a mower over it.
Since moving here I’ve “lost ground” on some sports but other spots I reclaimed from literal cows. (I pulled down temporary electric fence and in a few instances “discovered” stealth hunks of barbed wire when it wrapped around my mower deck.)
Nature is not wimpy. You gotta’ keep up the fight! If you don’t mow at least a few times every year all hell breaks loose. If the rain is sufficient it’ll go to chest high weeds in one season. It’ll be tree saplings and shoddy ill kempt forest in ten.
The thing is, anyone can manage a 1/5 acre suburban lot but land is hard work. (Though I don’t have huge tracts of land.)
It’s precious space. It’s a firebreak and “working area”. Working area means “whatever isn’t appropriate for indoors”. For many years I had free range chickens (and a corral of pigs). Last year I “camped” there. When I plow snow the “lawn” accumulates mountains of the stuff. You have to stack wood and gut deer and have bonfires and park dead trucks somewhere.
If you don’t have a lawn, where does the dog shit?
The last few years things degraded from “shabby” to “emergent wilderness”. I allocate resources as best I can and health came first. I barely managed to keep the grass hacked down. Though last fall I did do some firewood cutting and that made me happy. I even cleaned up some trees that had windblown on the lawn (though a few downed trees are still moldering along the edges).
This year I’m starting to “turn the boat around”. I mow with a tractor so “trimmed lawn” ain’t a thing. It’s a 3 point hitch, I can only be so accurate.
Years ago I cleaned up the yard with a weed whacker; just like a civilized person. I decided to do that again.
I dug through my garage and found two gas weed whackers. One is a Ryobi I bought sometime around 2003. The fuel hose would always pop out and spill gas on my pants. I remember it broke down a lot, I knew it was at least 23 years old, and it was a lame little turd even when it was brand new. It pissed me off but I’m too cheap to chuck it.
The other was a Stihl. I got it used about 17 years ago. I’d guess it was at least a decade old when I acquired it but I didn’t ask. That puts it just shy of thirty years old? Can that be?
It’s strange, I remembered nothing at all about it other than it existed and where I’d stashed it in the garage. I must have used it or I wouldn’t have put it carefully in the garage. Right? Right?!?
The Ryobi needs different gas mix than the Stihl (which is same 50:1 as my chainsaw… also a Stihl). I couldn’t even remember if the Stihl trimmer ran. But if I got gas for it and it didn’t run I’d easily use the mix gas in my saw. I suspected it was dead because I have some sort of machine amnesia about it. But what do I know?
I bought pre-mix from the store to maximize the odds it would start. A scandalous extra expense! I picked up a new spark plug because why not? (The plug might fit in my saw too.)
I expected a total fiasco. I decided I’d limit my efforts. I’d try to pull start it (and do all the things a man tries to get an old machine running) but no more than half an hour. I’m a shitty mechanic and I don’t need the drama. Should it fail, I’d throw it in the trash like a normal American disposing of a thirty year old hunk of junk.
Choke, fuel primer bulb, figure out the cryptic 1/0 switch (would it kill them to use the letters “on”/”off”?), hold the throttle. Pull…
Three tries. It was running in three tries.
HOLY SHIT!
I went apeshit cutting grass like a maniac. Fifteen minutes later the string ran out. I drove to the store and got a pack of string. I was so stoked I was probably speeding the whole time.
It took a bit to figure out the magic spell to load string but after that, it’s like a brand new tool. It’s running like a top!
In a world where my battery pack demanded a firmware update in a campground, let’s give thanks for machines that weren’t made like shit!
This doesn’t mean my lawn is trimmed and pretty, only that I’ve another tool in my arsenal. I’ll gain ground with time.
(Some of the weeds in my leach field were head high! The string in the trimmer just isn’t stout enough to handle that.)
I trimmed around my flagpole in time for Independence Day! I’m pleased as punch.
Another note: I have a Dewalt 20volt pruning saw. I call it “chainsaw on a stick”. It was also unused for a few years… though I have made some use of the 20v batteries with a small Dewalt chainsaw. I got it out and was pruning any tree branches which are the right height to batter my tractor cab (which is a hell of a lot of branches!). The ungainly device beat the hell out of my arms but it does its job well.
I’d slapped on a battery without even thinking about it. It was a battery that I’d “rebuilt” by 3d printing my own housing. How cool is that?
Owning a 3d printer means that you’ve the means to fix virtually anything but there’s a lot of learning and design and tinkering before you’re the mechanical wizard you’d like to be. I’d fixed the battery and forgot all about it. It’s neat to see the DIY battery just doing it’s job like no big deal.
Two wins in a week. Can’t complain about that!
Get some liquid edger (Roundup type stuff) and you will do a lot less weed whacking.
Roundup is 1000X better than string trimmer but you need to plan ahead. I want to trim the weeds first and then roundup later. That way I don’t wind up with a bunch of flammable biomass bone dry and near my structures.
RE your cord trimmer. The string will dry out, become brittle (I live in Phx. and know things) and suddenly it starts snapping off where it comes out of the drum. I soak mine in water before use. As in, “I’m going to weed eat tomorrow, so I’ll toss the spool into a can of water tonight”. Amazing how long that .95 stuff will last when it’s nice and moist and flexible.
Then there is the steel wire trimmer head making the rounds on YouTube. Supposedly made of German steel, and won’t break on rocks nor trees nor concrete.
Bet it would do a wonderful job on your foot or leg, however, if you were not careful!!!
Very good tip wrote there Anon 4:17. Healthy string goes a long way in keeping the user happy and busy.
My favorite powered tool – electric pole saw. Everything here in nature grows thorns and thick, so a tool that can cut AND reach in there is a Godsend. The electric is for convenience – as long as battery is found charged, goes right to work. To haul off, a good old pitchfork to spear and carry the growth is the ticket for easy moving.
I wish I knew these things 20 years ago – would have saved me hours of frustration.
I’m not talking down when I say this so please don’t take it that way. That 1/0 thing is binary numbering. 1 is on, 0 is off. I didn’t know this until someone told me.
Educated Savage
I know it but I don’t like it. When I’m messing around with gloved hands on a two stroke motor, binary numeric numbering that’s hypothetically tied to a the state of a circuit hidden in the handle is the furthest hung from my mind. I’m apparently the only one who thinks this way but I think machinery that could be labeled with simple actual words is best marked with words. (Heck it would be better for me even if it were labeled in a different language. Swedish?)
The “keep your string moist” tip is a good one.
Here’s mine: Keep that 30 year old machine running for as long as humanly possible because one you buy today won’t last nearly as long. Spending $30 on a new carburetor is way better than $200 on a new trimmer that will last maybe 5 years.
BTW: if you want to learn more about small engine repair and maintenance there’s a youtube channel called Chickanic and that’s what she does. Some really good tips and tricks, videos of complete repairs, things like that. Highly recommended if you’re interested in things like that.
I’ll try soaking the string. The old machine takes slightly smaller diameter string. It’s awesome on grass but doesn’t like bludgeoning through thick weeds (and small tree saplings really bog it down).
Couple of comments – Stihl tools are monsters _ they don’t die as long as they’re fed well.
re: Soaked string – yes, this is a thing. I have a medium sized Stihl that has a combo brush head on it (nylon blades + string). The packaging for the blades explicitly says to store them in water, so the same should be good for the trimmer string.
Now if you want to get into some serious ‘death to small brush’ – get one of the triangular blades. My experience has been anything up to 1/2 to 3/4 inch diameter is fair game… but brambles and such – you don’t even know your cutting it…
I’ve run blades and once had a job with a monster Stihl spinning a circular saw blade that could take down small trees. But for once I’m just going to try buzzing grass and not do overkill.
Right now I’m soaking 2mm “string” and simultaneously drying 1.6mm “filament” for my 3d printer. They are remarkably similar materials but I am adding/subtracting moisture based in purpose. I think that’s somewhat ironic.
I’ve still got a piece of metal in my belly fat from hitting a broken off piece of metal fencing in deep brush with one of those mounted on a Husqvarna hand held brush cutter (basically a really big weed whacker).
Not saying don’t use them, I still do on brush, they are awesome, but be aware they’re probably not what one should consider “safe”, especially in thick brush where you can’t see what you’re about to hit.
I have a variety of tools that attach to the string trimmer power part, the engine and upper half of the shaft. The pole saw is the one I use most, after the blower. Then occasionally I use a rototiller head for the raised beds. I have a couple of different lower parts with the actual string trimmer, one has spinning blades rather than string for the heavy weeds, one has the string in a bump head. The heads wear out so I pick those up at auction or yardsale too.
Most of the tools were picked up cheap, as were the many power heads, at auction, yardsale, or garage sale. The two things that go wrong with the string trimmer engines are easy and cheap to fix. The air filter clogs, or the priming bulb rots. The carbs eventually have a little rubber disc in them that gets stiff, and they don’t run, but a whole refresh kit is available online for <$15.
For online repair of small engines, I like Mustie1's youtube channel. The guy's an artist.
nick
I’ve got attachments for the battered cheap Ryobi but I’m going to keep the Stihl single purpose. I’ll check out the channel.
Hey, that looks like a really good channel. Thanks for that. I’ll be checking it out.
My hypothesis is that when you stashed it away decades ago you forced it into retirement. It held a grudge for maybe five years but then began to miss work like all old fools do. Finally when you gave it a chance to meaningful and useful the thing jumped at the chance. But lately I’ve been doing a lot of mushrooms so my ideas may be a tad suspect.
That’s not the shrooms, it’s absolutely truth. Also the old trimmer read my thoughts. I was like “I’m hankering to toss this thing in the trash” and the device knew it had to start or die.
Thicker line is not always a good idea. If the line is too heavy, it loads down the motor and doesn’t let it rev up into its power band. Still is real good equipment. The line I found works best is diamond shaped. Cuts better than just round line.
I agree. For grass the thinner line at good velocity is excellent. I theorize that if I get my ass in gear and hit the weed areas more than once in a blue moon soon all the thick weeds will be gone and it’ll just be grass. It’s a theory I haven’t yet proven.