Ever wondered how the pros can do such a good job with mowing their lawns, that others of us may not come close to? Well let’s reveal some trade secrets from the pros that we can all use to get a better finish to our lawns after mowing. There’s nothing difficult here at all, just the steps a contractor may use to do their work to a high standard.
Lawn Edging
If we use a blade edger for our lawns, then most often the edging will be done first, though this can often be a preference option which differs amongst different operators.
How Long Is The Lawn
An overgrown lawn and a regularly mowed lawn will be approached differently as to what order work is undertaken. The same is true for if the lawn is surrounded by raised garden beds or fencing.
If the lawn is overgrown, or is enclosed in, the line trimmer will be used first, to trim low all around the edges of the overgrown lawn area and along fence lines or raised garden bed walls. By doing this we leave all the long grass or shorter lawn clippings on the lawn itself, which will then be picked up when we mow the lawn. Leaving us with a nice clean lawn.
If the grass is particularly long or if there are a lot of leaves on our lawn, then we may also consider getting a blower to blow any debris away from the fence line and onto the lawn so as to have a particularly clean finish after mowing is completed. We could also blow any debris from pathways onto the lawn to also be picked up by the lawn mower.
Doing this ensures a cleaner finish to the lawn after mowing with no long pieces of grass left behind on our lawns after work is completed. Imagine now if we had mowed first and then trimmed second, all that long grass from an overgrown lawn would still be left sitting there after work was completed, and any shorter grass from a regularly maintained enclosed lawn area would also be left sitting there.
If however we have a regularly mowed lawn which is surrounded by open garden beds, we can then instead mow the lawn first and trim the edges with a line trimmer second, and just blow the small amount of clippings leftover directly into the garden beds to disappear.
Lawn Mowing
The perimeter of the lawn area will always be cut out first, this will give the operator turning space for when they do their up and down main mowing. Two perimeter cuts may be required in order to give us enough room to turn the mower around at each end of the lawn area.
We then mow up and down from one end of the lawn to the other in nice straight lines.
Any obstacles in the lawn will be tackled when we get to that part of the lawn. Once we approach the obstacle, such as a small garden bed or small paved area, we then do a circle around the object to cut out a new perimeter. Then on each side of the object we will continue with our regular up and down mowing from one end of the lawn up to the obstacle in the lawn, until the area of one side of the obstacle if fully mowed, and then we do the other side of the obstacle too. This process ensures we continue to have nice clean and straight mowing lines across our lawn, regardless of any obstacles in the lawn.
Line Trimming
We may have already completed this part if the lawn was overgrown, or if the lawn was enclosed by fences or raised garden beds. If not, then we would line trim after mowing is completed. To trim around the perimeter of the lawn and around any obstacles too. This will ensure a nice clean uniform finish to the lawn, with no bits of grass left sticking up anywhere.
If we don’t have a blade edger to use, then we can use the line trimmer to cut out our lawn edges, using the trimmer cord horizontally instead of vertically so as to cut out these edges.
If we did use a blade edger then we may still find some parts of pathway edges where some grass remained uncut with the edger, or we may find that open garden bed edging may not be as clean as we’d like. In this case we would also use the line trimmer vertically to clean up pathway edges and redo any soft garden bed edges for a more pronounced edging look to the finish.
Leaf Blower
Finally we would finish up with the handheld leaf blower to blow all areas clean after mowing work is complete, though even this too can be an art form.
We can use the blower to blow any remaining leaves or other organic matter from off the lawn and into garden beds to leave the lawn perfectly clean.
We would also use the blower to blow clean all pathways around the lawn, though this is where it can be an art form. Just pulling the trigger on high will create a mess, and that mess will have to go somewhere… and do we know where we want that mess to go before we make it?
If it’s just some sand or soil then we can happily blow it at full speed back onto the lawn and the lawn won’t be the worse for it. But if we’ve just left a perfectly clean lawn finish, then we may not want to blow a lot of leftover clippings back onto the lawn, nor leaves or other debris from pathways.
Instead we may want to choose a little area of a garden bed close by in which to direct the debris with the blower. Though in this case we want to be gentle with the breeze from the blower, slowly encouraging the mess into the intended area where we want it. Once all the big stuff is removed from around the lawn area, then we can hit the turbo button on the leaf blower to thoroughly removed all other small dust, dirt and other small particles either onto the lawn area or into another area of garden.
That’s It
We now have a professionally mowed lawn, and it really wasn’t that difficult, nor did it take too much longer to do the job properly and professionally ourselves. After all, the lawn mowing contractor does all these things to perfection in less time than most of us would take to just cut the grass the way we used to.
There is method in how we choose to mow our lawns and in what order we approach the tasks involved, and these things work together (with practice), to ensure a much improved finish to our lawns after mowing, but also in less time, if we do so wisely and with planning.
Mulch Mowing
The final note must detail mulch lawn mowing.
If we much mow our lawns then we would change some of these processes around.
We would still trim along fence lines and raised garden beds first for enclosed lawn areas, and we would still trim all the edges if the grass was overgrown, before lawn mowing began.
The only real differences would be that we want to be aware of what we are going to leave on our lawns after mulch mowing is completed.
If the lawn was covered in a lot of tree leaves for example, we may want to remove those first, or just choose to catch the lawn clippings on this one occasion. A few leaves on the lawn surface won’t make any difference at all, the mulched finish will finely chop up those leaves so they’re really not noticeable at all.
We may also want to blow any clippings from pathways, or any long clippings from overgrown lawns that were first line trimmed, back onto the main surface of the lawn, so all these too will be finely chopped up during mulch mowing.
Any leaves on surrounding pathways should be removed prior to mulch mowing because once mowing is completed we would blow all the remaining lawn clippings on the pathway straight back onto the lawn again, and in this instance we wouldn’t want to be dropping a lot of leaves back onto our nicely mulch mowed lawn.
Alternatively if we chose on a single occasion to catch clippings due to a lot of leaves on the lawn, then we would also first blow all the leaves from surrounding pathways onto the lawn first before mowing, so those too can be collected for a nice clean lawn and surrounds once we complete our work.
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