Spring Mower and Mulch Tips

Now that warmer days are here, it won’t be long before the sound of lawn mowers will be echoing through the neighborhood. If you do your own mowing, then now is the best time to get it tuned-up for the new mowing season.

• Lawn mower tune-ups aren’t hard, especially if you have a local lawn-mower repair shop. Just drop it off and in a few days pick it up. Tune-ups can run about $50 or so plus parts. With that you should get fresh oil, fresh gasoline, a new plug, and a sharpened blade.

• We don’t recommend doing the work yourself unless you have somewhere your old oil can be taken. If you’re handy with tools and feel comfortable taking a mower blade off, by all means do this. Just disconnect the electrical cable from the spark plug before working on the blade. Take a metal file and carefully run it down the beveled edges, then a final smoothing of the flat top-side to complete the process.
• If you haven’t already, take a walk around your property and pick up any debris, sticks or other accumulated items that might be run over by the mower on that first mowing.
• Remove any dead plant stems from the garden beds. If you have perennials make sure you crush the seed heads to disperse any remaining seeds before removing. This helps insure that those plants we return next year.
  It’s too early to plant annuals in our area except for cold hardy plants like pansies. Some sweet alyssum  might hold up to light frosts, but expect that you might lose them if you don’t cover them on cold nights. Violets will also hold up, but be careful, they like to spread.
• Now is also the time to put mulch around your trees and planting beds. When adding mulch, make sure the depth of the total mulch layer is no deeper than 4 inches. Deeper than this will definitely cause problems, especially for woody plants.

Brookside Lawn Service provides quality lawn and landscape services to much of northern Ohio including Grafton. Why not let us take care of your lawn?