Avoid using electric lawnmowers, brush cutters or petrol lawn mowers when the grass is wet. The grass mulch clogs up the blades, and is particularly detrimental to the chassis on your electric lawn mower or petrol mower. The moisture causes rusting and shortens the life of the chassis.
One should always prepare the lawn by raking up sticks, stones and flattening out the mole-hills. The petrol lawnmowers and electric lawn mowers definitely don’t like these – and the humps of sand from mole-hills can bend the motor shaft. Make sure the blades are sharp, we don’t usually recommend sharpening them because it is so difficult to get them perfectly balanced, so we usually say replace them with new. If the blades are out of balance it will damage the bearings in the motor of an electric lawnmower due to bad vibrations. The nuts and bolts on the whole mower or brush cutter also get loose and go missing due to vibration.
Obviously you will need to mow at least once a week in Summer, while the grass grows so quickly. If you have a model of petrol or electric lawn mower with a grasscatcher, you won’t need to rake the grass – but you will have to empty it onto a compost pile somewhere. We also suggest spreading the grass clippings out around flower beds. This keeps the moisture in for the flowers, and the weeds down.
To get a really neat finish on the lawn, mow it in vertical and horizontal overlapping stripes, rather than circles. Overlap each strip by the width of a wheel, so as not to get a stripe of uncut lawn between each mowed strip. Unfortunately, a brush cutter does not give this nice stripey finish, and can be a bit untidy. This is because it is not designed for ‘mowing’ lawn, but rather for cutting edges, under bushes where a mower can’t get to, and for doing heavier duty cutting of brush, veldgrass etc.
Changing direction at every mowing session will ensure the grass grows more upright, instead of lying flat in one direction.
At the end of your mowing session, scrape underneath your petrol lawn mower or electric lawn mower with a plastic baking spatula. Make sure you get any grass clumps off, and leave it out on a sunny day to air dry, so that it doesn’t rust from the underside.
Then sit back on your patio, with a cool drink, glass of wine or a beer and admire your good looking lawn!
