BarelyBlogging

It seems to happen at least once a year: due to a busy schedule, or rainy days, I don’t get a chance to cut my lawn for several weeks. By the time I get to it, the grass is so long that it chokes my mulching mower, and the usually diverting chore becomes a real job: I listen for the engine to bog down, then tilt up the mower’s base to prevent it from dying.

This year I decided to try a new technique: first I cut a series of stripes approximately every five feet:

Then I mowed the the lawn in the opposite direction:

My theory was that during the second pass of mowing, whenever the mower rolled over an area that had already been cut, it would have “room to breathe” and mulch up the grass, so the mower would not get bogged down.

i didn’t really think this would make a difference, but I was pleasantly surprised that it worked!