What’s the best way to mow a lawn?
It is always a challenge to work out the most efficient way to mow a lawn. Clockwise? Anti-clockwise? Rows? Spirals? The answer is, it depends. 1 What side does your ride-on discharge clippings?
There are two schools of thought. If your mower sends clippings out to the right, mow in a clockwise direction. This means you mow over the clippings you’ve just cut, slowly shuffling them into the middle of the lawn. Some will disappear with all the cutting and recutting. The remainder will form one final row of clippings which is easy to rake up. You will also avoid blowing clippings into the side of buildings or through a window or door.
However, if your grass is long and/or wet, it’s a better idea to mow so clippings are blowing to the outside. This way, you don’t have to mow over them which can block up your deck and create random clumps of wet grass. 2 Are you mowing in rows or circles? Some very keen people at Popular
Mechanics magazine asked a master puzzler to work out what was more efficient: mowing in straight lines or spirals. To make it easy, they worked it out assuming a flat area of lawn with no trees or garden beds.
The most important factor is not to mow over the same area twice. That’s easy if you have a zero-turn mower but more of a problem if you don’t.
They also calculated how many turns it took, comparing rows and spirals. For the area they set up, it required a lot of mathematics to work out they both required a total of 30 turns.
The result was a tie.