Avoid Making These Common Mistakes With Your Lawn

GrassHaving problems getting that high-quality lawn you crave? Before you start spending serious money on new equipment and care, make sure you aren’t making one of these common, easy-to-fix mistakes.

Cutting Too Much Grass

The shorter you cut your grass, the less often you have to mow. However, trimming the blades down to the ground can severely hamper growth, keeping the grass from getting enough light and water to develop the root system. Each grass variety has a height that it grows best at, but in general warm weather grasses like to be around two inches tall, while cold weather grasses are at their best when they’re an inch tall. Trimming a maximum of one-third of the blade length will make mowing easier on the grass. Continue reading

How to Sharpen a Lawnmower Blade

Honda-Lawnmower-Blades-Birmingham-1To get a quality finish and a healthy lawn, your mower needs to be able to make a clean cut across the grass as it mows. This guide will walk you through inspecting and sharpening your mower’s blade to ensure your mower will slice through blades of grass instead of bruising and breaking them.

Removing the Blade

1. Disconnect the spark plug wire to prevent an accidental start.
2. Tip the lawn mower up on its side so that the carburetor is facing up to prevent flooding.
3. Mark the side of the blade facing out with a permanent marker or some spray paint. This way you’ll know which way the blade will need to be installed after sharpening.
4. Unbolt the blades. On some models, including all Twin Blade mowers, there are two bolts that hold the blade onto the engine shaft. Remove these bolts, but do not loosen the smaller center bolt. If the blade wants to spin, wedge a piece of wood between the blade and the deck. Continue reading