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| My little red ride on lawn mower |
After weeks of exhausting lawn mowing, especially during spring when growth is at its highest, it was time. I will digress into the rate of lawn growth - from early November thought to December, the grass on the lawn and the plants in the garden were growing at about 5 centimetres per week.
This meant the lawn really needed mowing weekly, or at the very least every second week. Given that we are on two thirds of an acre, with about half of that in lawn, pushing the normal lawn mower around was a big job. One of the other other good reasons to buy a ride on mower was purely financial.
The quote we received to mow our lawn was nearly $200 per cut. So for under $2000 buying the ride on mower wold pay for itself in about six months. An easy decision, that one. Anyway, the time came once my new ride on mower had been delivered. It was to e to fire it up for the first mow.
More on that nervous moment in another post, this post is about how to mow a lawn with tall grass using the ride on, as all as a bit about safe lawn mowing. With tall grass, there is one main thing to be aware of. A ride on mower is not a tank, nor an SUV. It's a mower.
If you mow too fast, tall grass can get wrapped around the central shaft of the mower, causing the belt to jam. The shaft will still spin, but if the cutting belt jams, this situation will cause the belt to burn out and not grip. Symptoms of this are a tell tale high squeal when mowing, this is the cutting belt slipping.
To avoid this, I followed this simple rule. Slow and steady, never use the full cutting deck in tall grass. Doing this means I am giving the ride on the chance to cut te long grass cleanly and lessening the chance of a jam. To put it in perspective, the first lawn I mowed with my new mower was about 30 to 45 centimetres tall. The mower's cutting deck was a 38 inch, and the machine has a top speed of 9 km/h with six forward speeds. I cut the lawn slowly, on speed one, using about one third of the cutting deck or less.
Sure, this first mow took about an hour, but it was well worth it for the quality of the cut - a lovely finish - as well as the lack of damAge to the mower. It also gave a few lizards the chance to get away. Another tip when using your mower for the first time is to inspect the lawn thoroughly before cutting.
You need to understand if there are any undulations, ridges, rocks, tree stumps or other obstacles. If the grass is long this is an absolute must. If you are mowing slowly, this means you can pay close attention to the surface, going quickly is a recipe for disaster.
More on safely using a ride on lawn mower in my next post.
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