For the Mowers

My baby: I admit to being the odd bird who likes

to mow the lawn. The day I got married I rose
early enough to to relax a little by getting one last
cutting in before leaving for a week.

Yesterday I got in the first mow of the year. It felt good. All day, it seemed, you could hear lawn mowers around the neighborhood running, the sounds of warm weather in suburbia, I suppose.

In the spirit of mowing season, here is my advice on lawnmowers (in rank order):

Raise it up!

Absolutely, my number one piece of advice—nay, plea—raise your lawnmower's cutting height. Most of us cut our grass too low. Want to keep down weeds, have the greenest lawn possible, reduce water use, and maintain healthy grass? Cut your lawn higher.

I think the love for low lawns comes from my home state. In southern California, hybrid bermuda grass reigns supreme. Many lawns in that region have common bermuda, but hybrid bermuda, which requires a reel mower rather than rotary, has no equal. You see hyrbrid bermuda on golf greens, cut to within half an inch of the ground, forming a dense, green turf. I think we have come to associate closely shorn lawns with civilization and the utter mastery of nature's wildness. Ecofeminism aside, most grasses should be cut higher than we do or have done by professionals (i.e., random people who own a lawnmower and a truck). Find out what kind of grass you have and cut it to the higher end recommended.

Here's the why for having a taller lawn: 1) research has shown a significant reduction in incidence of weeds (well over half, though I couldn't locate the university study I had seen) by choking out weeds; 2) higher lawn shades the ground more, which reduces the need for water; 3) taller lawn leads to deeper roots, which allows for stronger and more drought tolerant grass with better disease resistance.

4 strokes are better than two

If you should buy a power lawnmower and you're not going electric, about which I know nothing, look for a four-stroke engine, not two. Here's the key difference between them: two stroke engines burn oil and gas at the same time (often with a mix poured right into the gas tank); four stroke engines, like car engines, burn gas and consume very little oil at a time. Mechanics aside—especially since I can't hardly explain it—think about a small canister of oil burning into the air every time you mow the lawn: two stroke engines are that bad. Trashing the environment while you tend to your yard seems like a bad pairing.

Be like a hippie, compost

I'm not talking compost piles/bins, though those are lovely. If at all possible, don't bag your lawn clippings, use the composting mechanism the mower likely came with. When composting, the grass swirls around inside the cutting chamber longer, getting diced into smaller bits than usual and falling back onto the lawn. Why would you care? Two reasons. First, 50% of the nitrogen in the lawn clippings (the element that keeps grass green) will be reabsorbed by the lawn; it's like a self-fertilizing lawn. Second, if your city doesn't have green recycling, then that grass eventually sits under a tarp in a landfill next to cast off cathode ray tube televisions.

I admit, if the grass gets too tall between cuttings, this goes slowly or not at all because it clogs the mower. Just keep up with the mowing and mow half a strip at a time if need be. You, the lawn, and the earth benefit.

Treat your baby right

Maintenance: annual and weekly. Annually, check to see if you need to add or replace the oil. If you don't have much to mow, you may get away with biannual maintenance. I believe that if the oil is just barely brown and not black then you can skip one year (that is based on nothing but me). Also, check your air filter and replace it every year or so. Many times you can buy a kit at your local hardware store that has the oil, air filter, and spark plug in it; just note the make of your engine (not the mower) and look at the general shape of the air filter to figure out which kit you need.

Annually, remove the blade and have it sharpened, if you can't sharpen it yourself. It costs me about $4 a year to have it done. A sharp blade cuts cleaner, which has many benefits such as reducing lawn disease, slowing grass moisture loss, improving the look of the lawn (my mother can spot white tips on badly cut lawn at a glance), and making it easier for your mower to compost the grass without clogging.

After each use, make sure grass isn't stuck on the underside of the deck (the housing for the blade). Use a plastic putty knife, wire brush, or whatever (not a water hose!) to keep the damp lawn clippings from rusting out your lawnmower from the bottom, which I allowed to start happening. It's a simple thing that will prolong the mower's life.

Try to end the mowing season with an empty tank to keep the lines clean and water from ruining the insides. Alternately, buy some fuel stabilizer that you add to the gas to keep the inside from deteriorating while the snow starts falling.

Use a ruler not a calendar

Last, mow the lawn when it reaches mowing height. Rather than just mowing on Saturday—but if Saturday is your only day, then do that, of course—mow when you will only be cutting 1/3 of the height or less. If your lawn has gotten to four inches, and you must cut it, take no more than one and a third inches off. If you have a fescue, as I do, when it gets to four inches, cut it an inch or less, to keep the grass decently tall and to make composting easier. In ideal grass-growing weather I have to mow every four days, when it gets hotter and drier, I only need to mow my cool-weather lawn weekly.

That's it, now go love your lawn!