Lawnmowers

Some people go running for exercise, but not my neighbor. He mows his lawn three times a week. Usually it is in the evening as my toddler is trying to get to sleep. Sometimes I let my lawn go a couple extra days between mowing just to spite him.

Last weekend I was mowing my lawn and I realized that I had different height settings on the front and rear wheels. I set them to the same level, and was amazed that the result seemed so much more even than the previous week. And so I stated paying more attention to the height setting on my mower.

It is actually quite easy to set the height on this mower, it has levers on the front and back wheels, and if you get down close to it there are numbers on the side so you can easily set it where you want. This comes in handy if you happen to be mowing a thick, wet lawn; I have found that my mower will stall out on such a lawn when on a low setting, but if you raise the mower to a higher setting then it will power on through.

The mower has settings from 1 to 6. I used it set at 3 on my front yard, and set at 4 on the back yard, and it looks nice. The front is crisp and low, and is even with my neighbors, so it looks nice. I let the back be a bit longer because the kids like to run around with bare feet and this makes it a bit softer for them.

I read an article a while back (I will link it if I ever find it again) that suggested an easy way to help a lawn that is being choked out by leafy weeds: set your lawn mower to the highest setting for a few weeks and mow a bit more frequently than usual. This will let the grass grow taller and out-compete the weeds, which spread sideways. Then after the grass is nice and thick you can go back to the normal mowing height.