Guest Post - Push Mower

Today's entry is a guest entry from Eric in NC about maintaining your push mower.

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If your push reel mower isn't cutting the grass like it used to, one likely culprit is the blades not being properly set. Here's a quick way to check to see if this is the case. First, raise the height of the mower to the tallest setting. This makes getting at the blades easier:

You'll see here that the reel mower cuts grass like a pair of scissors. The rotary blades spin and come very nearly in contact with the stationary blade, where my finger is. Note that safety warning about not putting your hands inside this area, which is what I'm doing lol

First, push down on the rotary blades to simulate the cutting motion. You should feel no resistance and it should spin freely. If the rotary blades touch the stationary blades, you'll hear a metal on metal noise and this could be the reason why your mower is very difficult to push. If this happens, adjust the blades so that they are as close together without actually touching. 

If you find that your blades spin freely, take a strip of paper and position it in between the stationary and rotary blades like so:

Push down on the blades and the paper should be cut. Do this all alone the length of the stationary blade, being careful not to amputate your fingers.

If the paper does not get cut, you'll want to position the blades closer together. This is done different on each mower but what you'll be doing is adjust it little by little until the blades actually touch (you'll hear the noise when the rotary blade spins), and then back off the tiniest amount so that there's a tiny bit of space separating the two blades.

This is how it's done on my Fiskars mower. Now go out and enjoy your newly adjusted mower!

Man v. Plant Part 4

I decided to give some sprays a chance after realizing that pulling weeds would be a losing battle.  After spraying Bayer and Ortho branded sprays, most of the weeds have withered away.  However, the really annoying weed is standing strong.  I've been looking around online and can't seem to figure out what this weed is called.  One person suggested it was Cylindrica Imperata.  I see the resemblance, but it doesn't look exactly like it.

Any clue what this is?

Man v. Plant Part 3

We saw some ads about a weed pulling tool and decided to give it a try.  I'll give my impressions of the tool at the end.

Introducing the Fiskar Weed Puller.  It's the strange, orange contraption on the ground next to the hand shovel.  It has an orange handle, metal teeth, and a black lever.  It ran for about $25 at Lowe's so it's relatively inexpensive as far as tools go.  A suggestion to improve the tool would be to lengthen the handle as I do find that it is pretty short for a person my height.

To operate, you stick the metal teeth into the heart of a weed brush, like so.  You can step on the black lever to push the teeth deeper into the ground.  After the teeth are lodged into the ground, you pull the handle in the direction of the black lever.  The teeth will clamp around the root system of the weed (in theory) and your pulling motion will pull the entire root system out of the ground. 

Here is the end result.  You'll notice that it pulls up a lot of dirt along with the roots.  This will leave a noticeable hole in the ground, but you can always shake off the roots and replace the dirt if you want to.  Also, the orange portion of the handle in the bottom right corner of the picture is actually a mechanism that you an use to push the weeds out of the teeth after they have been pulled.  Just like a pump shotty.  Pump and you're ready to go again.

Final impressions: The tool is good for pulling weeds that grow in patches or bushes.  It is not so good at pulling weeds that grow in stalks.  The reason is because it is harder to target the teeth to pull out a stalky weed than it is to target a bushy or patchy weed. 

Another problem occurs if you have a sprinkler or drip system installed in your lawn.  Weeds often congregate around your sprinkler or drip pipes because that is where the most moisture is.  If you find that to be the case, be careful while using the weed puller.  The teeth aren't sharp so they won't cut your pipe, but they are strong enough to latch on and pull up your sprinkler pipe if you're not careful.  

Overall, the weed puller would be great if my weeds were more patchy or bushy rather than stalky, and if I didn't have a sprinkler system.  Definitely check out the type of weeds you have and their locations before deciding whether to buy this tool.  

Man v. Plant Part 2

Today, I decided to tackle the monstrous weed that had been growing at the corner of our greenbelt.  This *thing* had grown to my knee and it was thick.  I still haven't figured out what it is.  Maybe a quick trip to Lowes will help.  This was the before picture before getting to work.

This is the after picture.  It took about 2.5 hours, but the time flew by.  Now the corner is clean!

A pile of fun times.  In part 3, I'll move onto the next part of the greenbelt.

Man v. Plant Part 1

We didn't move into our house until three weeks after closing.  Not surprisingly, the spring weather caused a lot of weed growth in those three weeks.  It didn't help that our sprinkler system was running regularly during that time (our grass thanks us).  

This weed looks bad, but isn't hard to deal with.  The root system goes straight down into the ground so a quick tug will remove the entire weed.  

These weeds are ferocious (click pic above).  They can quickly grow to about knee high.  They're not a problem if you pull them when they're small,but when they grow big, the stalk hardens.  After it hardens, the weed will break off at the stalk if you pull at it.  The only way to remove it is to dig it up with a hand shovel.  Unfortunately, the root system goes deep and spreads out.  Even after digging up what seems like roots, it may not get rid of the weed.

Some people call it a wildflower.  I call it a weed.

Check back on the next post to see the results of hard work.