The best deal I've found on a garden tractor that's also a good lawn tractor, in your price range is this:
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It's a used Kubota BX2230 with 60" mower deck. It's got a little three cylinder diesel engine with around 24 or so horsepower, four-wheel drive, mid PTO shaft driven 60" mower deck, three point hitch, 540 rpm rear PTO, hydraulic lift on deck, and LOTS of other good features. I've got the 60" belly mower, a used rear blade, a 48" King Kutter gear drive XB series 3pt hitch mounted tiller, a heavy duty dump cart, and a pull-behind fertilizer and seed spreader.

It had 1500 hours on it when I bought it, but the engine, transmission and everything else on it is in good condition. If I'd known what great little tractors these are, I'd have had one years ago.

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I've kept my 100 yards of gravel driveway in great shape, mowed my yard and the church yard with it, fetched firewood out of the woods, and put in four deer plots with it this summer. I do wish I had a front end loader for it though.

Bring enough gun and know how to use it.

Know that it is not the knowing, nor the talking, nor the reading man, but the doing man, that at last will be found the happiest man. - Thomas Brooks (1608-1680)