Are You Ready To Mow?

We talked before about fertilizing your lawn and this is great for giving you a good looking lawn, but to keep it looking great and make sure your grass is a cut above your neighbor's, it's important not to let your mower and other power equipment get you hot under the collar because they're not ready to go when you are. Though I know the importance of maintenance it is not one of my strong points and I need to work hard at doing what I know I need to do.

One thing that helps some people is to create a "to-do" list for yourself and make sure you have check boxes to keep tabs of what you’ve completed. One of those check boxes needs to be: Maintain Outdoor Power Equipment. This task is not only essential for the safety and performance of the equipment, but also helps keep your yard healthy and free of disease throughout the summer.

If you are handy, you can do a lot of the basic maintenance on your outdoor lawn equipment yourself in just a couple of hours.

Some steps to follow include:
1: Change the oil and replace the filter. Be sure you dispose of the oil properly.
2: Check and replace worn spark plugs
3: Clean the grass clippings away from cooling fans, air intake screens and under mower deck
4: Inspect air filter
5: Sharpen blade - A sharp blade is very important for keeping your lawn healthy.

Maybe you prefer to be working in the garden rather than working on tools. Or you just aren’t mechanical. Then you need to have a small engine repair shop do the maintenance for you. That’s alright, not everyone likes or is able to perform their own maintenance. Some of these small engine repair shops will even come and fix it at your place or at least pick it up and bring it back to you.
A good repair shop will perform a 12-point (or several point, depending on what type of equipment you have) maintenance & inspection service on your outdoor power equipment.

Some of the steps involved with this service include:
1: Check battery (if it has one) voltage and continuity
2: Clean engine
3: Inspect belts for wear and adjust tension
4: Check tire tread and pressure
5: Test operation of brakes, carburetor, transmission and safety systems
6: Change transmission fluid, engine coolant, oil and filters (certain models)
7: Grease axle and mower spindles
8: Sharpen blades, check balance and straightness to prevent vibration.

Don't let the grass grow under your feet before you perform some basic maintenance on your outdoor power equipment. One thing we all should understand though and that is, don’t cut your lawn too short. We may want a golf course great looking lawn but it is better for the grass if you leave it a little longer. Now that you’re ready to mow and trim and keep things looking good this summer, is the next thing getting yourself in shape for doing it? Well I won’t go into that here but it may be something you need to think about.

Maintenance “by the yard”