There is a charging system built in. The real question may be the age of your battery. In my experience, these little tractor batteries have a short life, say 3 years +/_, and they show their age by holding a charge for a shorter and shorter time. It sounds as if that is the first thing to check, since a small amount of recharging was all the tractor needed to start.

I have only had the mower about 4 months - bought it brand new. However, I only have used it about 3 times for about 5.9 hours of run time. So I would guess that the battery is only 5 month s old at most. Would infrequent usage be causing my issue? Perhaps something is draining the battery when the tractor is not in use?

All thoughts welcome

If it's that new, probably not the battery failing, but there are always defective units to be wary of. Check that all of the conections at the battery cables are tight, since a charge may not be getting through loose connections well enough. The next step I would do is take a meter and see what voltage readings you get at the battery with the engine off and then with it running at a decent speed. When running, you should see an increase due to charging. If it is charging, you may just be waiting too long between uses, as it sounds as if battery is low but not actually flat. Another step is to test for a battery drain by measuring current flow from battery with key off. Remove one of the battery cables and hook up tester between cable and battery terminal so it is in the line of flow. Should be zero flow with everything off.

I have another theory - this one provided by the John Deere dealer - the starter solenoid could be bad. Mounted next to the battery, the solenoid is between the battery and the starter. The guys at JD suggested that I cross connect the two leads on the solenoid. If the engines tries to start by doing this and it will not start using the key, then the solenoid is bad. I will attempt this tonight and post a follow-up entry.

The tractor started with a bit of a battery charge, so why would you think you have a bad solenoid?

Charging at 2 amps for an hour is 2 amp-hours. Not very much when you consider total battery capacity.
I'd leave the charger on for at least 8-10 hours.
How long did you run the machine? If just a few minutes, you may not be giving the battery time to get fully charged.
The alternators on these need the engine running near full speed to put out their rated capacity. If you just idled the engine for a few minutes, you put very little charge back in the battery.
Basically, I'd make sure I was STARTING with a known, fully charged battery before condemning any components.
If problems arise, charge the battery overnight and get it tested.

Smiley, had the same problem on my L111 when it was new. Had to put a charger on it. Mentioned it to the dealer when he picked it up for annual maintenance, he made a note of it and when it came back, no more problems. It now starts even though it sits over the winter. I have no idea what they did to it, since I wasn't home when they delivered it. Was not charged for anything, so it obviously wasn't a major deal. I would call a dealer and see if they can tell you the likely issues they have seen with the new deliveries.

Thanks for the advice bill_kapuan. I did test the battery; everything checked out. Furthermore, the solenoid replacement did not fix my problem either. So this morning I took my tractor back to the John Deere dealer. The service manager said that he had never seen a problem like mine before (figures!). I will place a follow up post when I get their assessment of my issue.

"The service manager said that he had never seen a problem like mine before (figures!)"

Isn't it amazing how many times someone is so unique in a service managers eyes!
He's probably telling the truth. I'll bet there's a LOT of things he hasn't seen before! That's why they call them managers instead of leaders!:-)

Sorry, I forgot to post my follow-up.

The final issue has been resolved with my tractor. Apparently, I had a bad ignition switch; thus, it would drain my battery after the tractor was idle for a while. The resolution was to replace my ignition switch and put in a new battery. So far, it has been working flawlessly.

Thanks from all to smiley afs for the follow up posting. smiley, a question & answer forum works better if people give a follow up (like you have). Glad you got satisfactory resolution to your parasitic drain problem.