I will be discussing how I take care of my lawn. This is intended to help other do it yourselfers on how to improve the appearance of their lawns. We will be going over maintaining equipment, fertilizer, weed control, and other topics. Please watch for my videos.
Fiskar's is a piece of garbage. The stationary blade on mine has always been bent so you can't cut well on either side, and the front right wheel doesn't contact the ground if it ground is even. Good design, horrible manufacture. Stop making things in China, no quality control.
Excellent video. Those trees have some thick foliage. I've fertilized my trees but not deep. I'm starting this year. I do soil samples each year so I am also working on amending my soil.
Thank you for the video. FYI --- Gas mowers will start to deplete and disappear as the Electric mowers are becoming part of the norm. I purchased a Cal Trimmer as my last mower to be used well into my retirement as I am not a fan for electric mowers and there is NO electric reel mowers yet.
Put down that pre emergent any time during the year, it's never a bad time to put it down, never too late, and one of the best things you can do. I wouldn't do the 3 in 1 he reccomends in the video. Just go with a straight pre emergent like an 0-0-7
Looking forward to this new season & videos. When do you normally apply pre emergent? A few days after scalping, or another time? I’m also in North Texas, so I figured I’d use a lot of these videos as a reference. 😊 Thanks!
Lew, I got some pre emergent today from lowes, live in NTX also. Should I go ahead and put it down considering the high Temps next week. New to this, I Also got some Image weed killer because right now I have some weeds with purple nubs that have taken over the lawn. I assume they are winter weed
I have the same question because I already have full grown weeds. Even though it’s going to be extra work, I think what I’m going to do is pull some weeds by hand by the root as best I can then start the scalping and other steps
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I have a CubCadet trimmer with a four cycle engine, I actually have two. The first one I bought about 14 years ago, and the second one I bought about 8 years ago when my son was mowing lawns for the neighbors when he was in high school. Prior to that I had used trimmers with two cycle engines, but I didn't like having to mix oil in the gas. I also seemed to always have problems with the way the two cycle engines performed. So I went to trimmers with four cycle engines so that I could use the same gas I use in my mowers. The edger attachment that I have will work on either of my trimmers.
I will ocassionally bag the clippings. If I let the lawn grow too tall between mowings, I will bag the clippings; or if leaves have fallen on the lawn, I will attach the bagger to collect leaves off of the lawn. I go into this in more detail in my July video that I just put out. Thanks.
So, I picked up a used Fiskar reel mower. Got it home and mowed a bit. Found that it wasn't cutting too well. Searched all of YT for info regarding adjusting the reel. Adjusted the reel and have found that one blade keeps making contact with the fixed blade even after adjusting. The blade doesn't look bent however there is a bit of a mark just above the edge. After seeing your video I decided that even though the mower had only been used about 5 times I'd try back lapping. Went to the auto store and bought some lapping compound and then bought a 1 1/4" socket. Now I'm at a standstill as to how to mount this 1/2 socket to my drill...it's a Hitachi battery powered drill. Just a normal one with the 3 teeth that clamp the drill bit. Any ideas? BTW, thanks for the informative video.
You use what's called a socket adapter, or sometimes referred to as a drill socket. They are very inexpensive and you can find them almost everywhere. You may want to look at my July video that I just put out. I show this in my July video. Thanks.
Thanks for this post - super helpful. I'm just about to do this w/ my Fiskars mower, which I believe is an earlier model (no chain). But my thinking is that I adjust the stationary blade _before_ sharpening. This way the compound will make more even contact between blades. Do you see any problems with this order of things?
I cover this in my July, 2022 video. If the blades are not evenly aligned along the bedknife, then yes, adjusting before backlapping would be the correct order of things. But adjusting to increase the contact between the blade and bedknife before backlapping should not be necessary unless the mower is so far out of adjustment that the blades do not grind against each other with the grinding compound on the blades. Thanks for the comment, and hopefully you watch my July video as well.
Im down in the Temple/Waco area and have been looking for the dethatch blade all over. Wasnt even sure if they made it anymore. I'm going to take your advice and look online. Usually I manually rake to loosen and get up what I can, but that as you know, is a lot of work. Then mow on the lowest setting like you. I cross mow one way, then the other. Thanks for the info and advice.
I scalp my Bermuda March 15, lawn greening up so nice… should I start mowing it to keep it low or let it grow and green even? Thanks I’m in Arlington Texas
If it has been a little over two weeks since you mowed on March 15th and the lawn is greening up, you probably want to start mowing on a regular basis. I don't know how low you scalped your lawn, but you should raise the mower height one setting above what you scalped at. This way the lawn should start to fill in while minimizing the amount of remaining stubble from the dormant lawn showing through. The more frequently you mow, the thicker the lawn will fill in. The frequent mowing encourages the lawn to grow outward rather than upward which is what makes it thicker.
@@lawntipswithlew3192 thanks for your reply. I did a good scalp, started at 3 inches then 2 and finally end at lowest setting on a push toro recycler… all scalp and baged! Last year I didn’t scalp it I went with detaching option, it green up pretty good as well grass grew where there were hardly any grass.
As long as you are mowing regularly, and taking off less than one third of the height of the grass, mulching should be all you need to do. Mulching puts nutrients back into the soil. If you find that you are leaving clumps of grass when you mow, then you may want to consider bagging the clippings.
I used to scalp my lawn during the late part of February, but I stopped doing this several years ago. Scalping that early, I would be waiting about three weeks before the grass started to grow. For the past several years, I wait until mid-March to scalp the lawn. By then, there are usually sprigs of new growth showing through the dormant lawn. Also, the average last frost in this part of Texas is March 12th, so the risk of a late frost slowing the new growth is minimal by then. Looking at the 10 day forecast, the weather in our area should be faily nice with high's in the 70's, so if you did go ahead and scalp on March 1st, you should be fine. As long as the weather is going to be good, scalping will help the soil to warm up which will encourage the lawn to start growing sooner.
