In my first article on buying a lawn mower, I mainly talked about mower that both mulch and catch and why you need both. Now I am going to help you guys with some of the actual features to look for that may or may not be native to all makes and models.

Power Plant or Engine

When you buy your next lawn mower, make sure it is at least 5 horsepower. Anything less and you can have clumping issues when you mow thicker areas of your lawn. You can also run into bog-down issues if you have to miss a cut and hit it a little longer.

The other reason to get a mower more than 5 HP is you want one that is self-propelled. Let’s face it, pushing a lawn mower is not very fun. Today’s technology makes self propelled mowers cheaper but you must have the power to push it, even with a full bagger.

Deck Depth

No one really thinks about this much, but your lawn mower deck needs to be at least 5 inches deep because when we are mulching mode we need the clippings to remain under the deck long enough for the blade to grind them into small bits. If the deck is too shallow, they fall out quickly and clump up.

So you can see that these two tips for buying a lawn mower go together. Make sure you get a strong power plant and a deep deck and you should be happy with your lawn mower purchase!

One of the biggest questions I get is “how do I know if I am buying a good quality lawn mower and what should I look for?”

This one post of a series on buying your next lawn mower.

Mulch Or Catch?

The first thing I recommend is that you get a lawn mower that does both mulching and bagging. You want to mulch during normal summer mowing so grass clippings can be returned to the lawn. But there are times you want to bag up the clippings.

You want to bag if:

1. The lawn gets too long between cuttings
2. Disease is present in the turf
3. You want to suck up fallen leaves

For these reasons, I always recommend buying a new lawn mower that has the ability to go from mulching to bagging easily.

Most modern lawn mowers priced over $300 have both of these features. In a separate article, we talk more about choosing your next lawn mower, specifically in the power plant.