Two relatively simple upgrades to your lawn mower can elevate your lawn. Anti-scalp rollers and lawn striping bars are easy to install, relatively inexpensive, and help keep your lawn looking professionally cut, without the cost of hiring a lawn service.
Avoid Lawn Scalping with Anti-Scalp Roller Kits
One of the quickest ways to kill a lawn is to cut the grass too close to the base. Longer grass is healthier for several reasons, including the additional shade provided by the long blades of grass, the ability to hold moisture for longer, and the ability to photosynthesize more energy. Knowing how to strike the perfect balance between grass length for health (where longer is better) and grass length for aesthetics (where a nice, clean cut is ideal) is a key element in good lawn care.
While the most common cause of lawn scalping is setting the mower blades at the lowest height, accidental scalping can happen. This is usually due to an uneven or bumpy lawn, especially ones with lots of low areas. As the mower is no longer level, you can slice the grass too close to the base.
If you’ve just upgraded to a wider mower, it can come as a surprise that a yard is uneven. With a small walk behind, those tiny dips and divots often go unnoticed. When you’re making wide passes with a heavy piece of machinery, every bit of uneven ground becomes a potential scalp zone. A wrong turn could have you running the deck into the dirt and cutting away a much bigger chunk of grass than you intended.
The best way to keep your deck from digging into the dirt or bottoming out is to install anti-scalp rollers onto your mower. These easy-to-attach rollers protect the trim side of your deck so that it remains level and flat over the toughest terrain. Many of our mowers have an anti-scalping roller option making it less likely to scalp the lawn.
It is important to keep these anti-scalp rollers in good condition and repair, as the roller pins can come loose, and the wheels can wear down with excessive use. If you routinely work on uneven ground, you should include roller maintenance into your regular mower upkeep schedule.
Lawn Striping Kits
If you want the crisp stripes of a ball field and you aren’t currently achieving them, installing a striping bar will give you the defined stripes you want. Stripes occur because of the way light is reflected off of blades of grass after the mower has passed over it. A pass in one direction pushes the grass blades to the right; as you come back the other direction, the mower pushes them the left. A striping bar will push the grass down further, accentuating your stripes.
With the right mower, Exmark upgrades, and vigilance, you can get the professional results you want, no matter what the terrain. Find a local dealer to get the Exmark mower that’s right for your lawn.
