Saturday, June 05, 2010

Cuts - Bags - Discharges - Fertilizes

On the top of the circular blade protector on our self-propelled lawnmower it says "Cuts, Mulches, Bags". That may be fine for mowing someone else's lawn, but how about a lawnmower that fertilizes!

We ran the animals through the "nursery research plot" to take down the grass that was getting out of control. It would be a tough job for the weedwhipper but in one day, here's the results.




Peter

3 comments:

David said...

I like that '' a mower that fertilizes''! I did the same thing yesterday with our cows too in a part of the garden that I'm getting ready to plant in potatoes. I plant potatoes late to avoid the bugs so the small field had grown up in weeds so I thought I should see if it would work to put the cows on it and then till the soil.It worked great over nigh it look like I had ran the disk though! I wish I got before and after photos it looks all ready to plant. I am surprised that your cows and horse did not eat the trees. Our cows would have ate all the leafs and broke the branches! What types of trees do you have in your nursery
~David

Peter said...

Hi David, Thanks for the comments!

Most of the trees we have planted in that spot are ones that we purchased from the soil conservation service in town. We transplanted out the small ones, but some of those big ones were too big to take out. There are some cedar, maple, plum, black walnut and a bunch of lilocs and a crab apple tree.

I was thinking of what you mentioned about the cows eating trees. Maybe your cows are lacking some minerals that the trees are able to give them. Trees take up minerals from deeper in the soil and animals were designed to eat the food that best meets their needs. Our cows did bend a few trees over, but they didn't try to eat them.

Peter

David said...

It could be they were lacking and the trees had what they needed or it could be that since I have gone to smaller paddocks they are eating every thing in sight. It is hard to say the cow is a very complex organism and does not follow the books! We have probably only scratched the surface as humans on our understanding of ruminant animals.