One of the challenges of living in a nice house with a large (1 acre) lawn is dealing with the four hours per week of mowing time.
I find myself often thinking strange SDMBish thoughts, like how do you mow your lawn?
Are you a:[list=1]
[li]Traditionalist - Straight lines, square corners[/li][li]Lap Driver - Follow the outer contour of your lawn, creating “ripples” around obstacles[/li][li]Pattern Maker - Mow funny patterns just to amuse yourself[/li][li]Other - Um, not sure what would go here, but I’m sure someone will come up with something.[/li][/list=1] Personally, I have a moderately hilly lawn so I alternate between driving laps and making patterns. A well lapped lawn tends to look like all the trees jumped in the big grass puddle and ripples formed out and merged in an interference pattern. My most recent pattern lawn started as a crop circle that has vortex whorls coming off in the areas where the big circle wouldn’t fit. I tried to take a picture of it, but the patterns weren’t clear enough.
You’ve got to have way too much time on your hands.
Me too! I started out normal then became a diagonal man. The diagonals look more cool than straight lines.
Then I bought a little tractor thingy ( I actually drove the SOB home from the store).
At first I just tried not to crash into things, mow over small animals or overturn my vehicle. Now I’m throwing caution to the wind and getting fancy again.
I think I’m going to try the criss cross baseball field look next. I’ll let you know how it goes.
The thing is, every mowing method I’ve tried takes about the same amount of real time (4 hours or so), so I keep looking for new and entertaining ways to make the time seem to go faster. I’ve found that as long as I change up my mowing pattern every now and then, I’m at least entertained.
I have only a tiny suburan lot. My mower has mulcher blader. I mow around the outer rim with the blower tossing grass to the inside. As I mow all but the first loop, I am remulching the grass mulched by the previous pass. When I reach the center of the lawn, there is a small pile of grass dust which I kick out of the way before mowing that last square.
Forget the pattern. Cut a couple of non-connecting swaths in the lawn, either straight or with a few bends, dig a hole at the end of each swath, take out your pitching wedge and putter, and play a round of golf.
Can’t say that my parents were thrilled with the grass cutting job I did. javascript:smilie(’:D’)
The way they did it was to do overlapping passes back and forth from one side to the other. The direction of these passes varied each day (e.g. day 1: front to back, day 2: side to side, day 3: 45 degrees left, day 4: 45 degrees right). The edges (surrounds, trees, obstacles, etc.) alternated days between clockwise and counter-clockwise.
Apparently, this prevents the grass from “learning” a direction, improving not only the playing surface but also its ability to be cut consistently. Of course, this really does require the use of a reel-type mower to force the grass blades in the direction of the pass (this is why when you see golf courses or sports fields on TV the grass alternates between light and dark bands). A rotary mower will twist the grass in one direction, regardless of how you pass over it. The reel mowers tend to give a better cut.
If you have features on your lawn (it sounds like you do) you can accentuate them by creating surround passes as you described, but you need to be careful to alternate the pass direction each time you cut. It is much more difficult to maintain a consistent swath overlap on curved paths like that than to do straight lines, so your best bet is to cut the lawn in straight paths as per the above, and then add as many surround passes to your features as you feel you need.
I just realized I wrote three paragraphs on cutting grass. Man, I need to get a life…
The mister will sart at one side and go to the other. For instance, He will start on the left side, and go up towards the house, and then back again. This may sound normal… untl he gets to the side of the house where the back yard has no fence. He will go all the way down to the end of the back yard, and then all the way back up to the front! It doesn’t make an odd pattern but when the neighborhood boy doesn’t do it it like that, he goes balistic! (may have spelled that wrong). The neighbor does a great job, but lately he onlt does it for us when we are on vacation. Maybe it’s a guy thing.
I’ve got a tiny lawn and an electric ‘fly-mo’ type mower (no wheels, it hovers above the ground). I cut the grass pretty much the same way I vacuum a room, just randomly moving it around till all areas are hit. It takes about as long to take out/put away the equipment as it does to cut the grass.
Back in the Day, when I was a teen mowing the Family Yard … BTW this was the late 1960s … My Dad was ProWar (Vietnam, look it up in your History Book) … I wasn’t. I’d start with a Peace Sign, the the area outside the circle, then the four areas within the circle. Dad either didn’t notice, or care, as long as I was doing the lawn, and not him.
Now - don’t have a lawn, have “natural vegetation” on a heavily wooded lot. Pisses off the nicely manicured subdivision that invaded my formerly rural area.
I used to be a straight guy, but now I swing diagonally, alternating the direction each time. I think it’s just a phase, but it looks cool and it makes the hills easier to climb.
God I’m getting old…anybody want to talk about grubs?
I go pretty much from side to side as well. My lawn is pretty small so it’s not a big deal. The only part I have trouble with is this gigantic hill in my backyard. I’ve tried mowing it in every direction, but it never gets any easier.
