JD

Our neighbors let us borrow their John Deere tractor to finish up mowing our grass.  I went over and grabbed it last night.  It is a 42 inch deck model like our Cub Cadet but it has a stronger 20 HP engine compared to the 16.5 hp ours has.  The power became immediately apparent once I engaged the blades.  The tractor powered through the thick areas of our lawn where our Cadet normally will struggle.  Normally we have to slow down significantly when mowing these sections, with the John Deere I could keep on trucking.

  On the negative side, the blades on the John Deere are turned on by flipping a long lever up by the steering wheel.  The first time I flipped it, I was rewarded with getting smacked in the knee.  The Cub Cadet has a tidy little knob you pull out which I prefer.  The John Deere also had that incredibly annoying “safety” feature where it won’t let you mow while backing up.  One of the first things I did when I got the Cub Cadet was find out how to disable that.  It’s very annoying to not be able to mow going backwards when you are trying to get into nooks and crannies of the yard.  The increased power of the tractor definitely made mowing go quicker.  It convinced me that our next tractor will have a bigger engine as well as a larger mowing deck.

Nothing else to say, tough.