For anyone whose yard work duties consist of pulling a few weeds and taking the weed whacker for a light stroll, you don’t really have to worry about how you’ll get it all done. If you have more than just grass and a few stray weeds, here’s what you can do to make your yard work more efficient.
1. Get a riding lawn mower
Nobody wants to stand behind a lawn mower and push it around for any length of time, but when the grass needs to be cut, you have no choice. Unless you have a riding mower. Kubota makes some powerful mowers if you haven’t already started your search.
As one of the best inventions of all time, riding mowers make yard work easy. It doesn’t matter how small or large your yard is, all you need to do is hop on, start it up, and ride around. Okay, there are things you need to be careful about and there is an art to mowing. However, compared to a gas-powered mower you walk behind, sitting on top of your mower will make mowing the lawn easy as pie.
2. Use a walk-behind string trimmer
If you’ve never used a string trimmer that you push just like a lawn mower, you’re in for a big treat. Instead of messing with a traditional weed whacker, these powerful string trimmers will mow down just about anything in their path, including blackberry and thimbleberry bushes. When you’re used to clipping berry bushes by hand, you’ll be amazed at how much easier it is to run it all down.
Provided you install a quality string or blade, you can crunch through brambles and weeds faster than even the most skilled worker using a standard weed eater. If you want efficiency and speed, a walk-behind string trimmer is essential, especially when you live in an area with blackberry growth, prickly vines, or toxic plants like stinging nettle.
3. Practice the classic art of scything
Watching someone use a scythe to cut grass might make you wonder if they’re crazy or if they just really enjoy manual labor. The truth is that you can cut grass with a scythe faster than you can with a weed whacker. It’s probably not going to be faster than a riding mower, but it’s still pretty fast.
It takes skill to use a scythe, but once you get into the proper motion, it’s easy and automatic. You’ll actually use your hips more than your arms to get a proper swing. The downside is that every 10 minutes or so, you’ll need to sharpen the blade. To make that work, you’ll need to carry a whetstone on your belt in a container of water.
Using a scythe might be a little too much for most people, but if you don’t mind doing the work, and you normally rely on a string trimmer to cut large patches of grass, give scything a shot and you’ll be happy when you see how efficient it is.
As a side note, it’s worth investing in a scythe to keep on hand for emergencies. If you run out of fuel or can’t get fuel for some reason, at least you’ll always have a way to cut the grass.
4. Get a self-driving lawn mower robot
If you feel like spending a little extra money, you can get a self-driving robot mower that will just run around cutting your grass on autopilot, much like a Roomba cleans floors without any human input.
These automated robot mowers can cost anywhere between $500 and $4,000, depending on the model, but if you really can’t be bothered to tend to your yard, they’re perfect. Just set it and forget it.
Although this increases your efficiency by reducing your workload, it’s not exactly fast. You can set up the boundary you want your robot mower to operate inside of, but it won’t necessarily cut the grass in a specific, methodical manner. It might go over the same areas a handful of times while missing other patches. However, if you don’t mind waiting, a robot mower will make your yard work easier.
5. Hire out your tasks
Last, but not least, consider hiring someone to handle your yard work. This is the most efficient method around. Whether you supply the equipment or not, you won’t need to do anything other than pay the bill and enjoy your clean space.
Yard work doesn’t have to take all day or all weekend
There’s always a way to make yard work easier. You shouldn’t have to spend all day or all weekend doing the work. Upgrade your equipment today so you can get it done faster and start enjoying your weekend sooner.
