I have been writing a lot lately reminding you guys of tasks that you need to complete here just before we hit the dead heat of the summer. I have talked about lawn watering, and also given you advice on buying slow release fertilizers, but what about maintaining that power equipment? I specifically want to talk about maintaining your lawn mower during the hotter months of the year.

Early Summer Lawn Mower Checklist

The long spring has taken a beating on your mower thus far, but the heat of the summer will be worse. Here is how to get prepared.

1. Change the oil. Your lawn mower is a combustion engine in most cases and the oil will break down over time and friction will occur in the engine. This friction can cause the engine to cease, causing you to have to buy a new mower. Surprisingly, many of you never change your lawn mower oil! You must do this–and now. It will get hot soon, and you don’t want to have your mower blow up on ya!
2. Sharpen the blade. Once again, all those spring lawn cuttings have surely dulled out the mower blade. If you don’t keep it sharp, the blades of the grass will rip and shred when you cut. During the hottest months of summer, these rips will allow disease pathogens to enter the plant. They also allow an avenue for moisture to escape.
3. Change the spark plug. This one relates back to #1 above and is also very important. If the spark plug has buildup on it, the gap will be incorrect, causing the motor to run rough. A bad spark plug can also hurt the ability for your mower to start on the first pull each time!

These are simple maintenance tips, but they are very important. Trust me!

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!