• Don’t let your teenager go door-to-door advertising in an unfamiliar neighborhood. For safety-sake, they should stick to mowing lawns in a neighborhood you know. Mowing for people you already know is safest of all.
• Make sure your teenager always tells you where they’re mowing before they go, even if only by phone or text.
• Talk about safety before your teen starts taking on clients. Let them know if for any reason they feel uncomfortable with a client, they should leave the job immediately. Even if it’s just a funny feeling, safety should come first.
• Your teenager should always be familiar with equipment before using it.

For more lawn mower safety tips, take a look at some of All About Lawns’ lawn mower safety articles. A lawn mowing business can be a great way for your teen to earn some cash and learn about entrepreneurship. With a few safety precautions, it can be a win-win for everyone.

• Where do the lawn stripes come from? Ballfield stripes aren’t the result of mowing the lawn at different heights or anything tricky like growing different types of grass in strips. It’s all a matter of bending the lawn so that the blades of grass reflect light differently.
• It’s all about mowing direction. The first step to achieving stripes is to master mowing in a straight line. Mow a long strip in one direction, then flip the mower and mow the strip next to it in the other direction. You’ve got the start of your stripes! Need a little more guidance? The Art of Manliness has a great column on mowing patterns. But a lawn mower all by itself isn’t enough…
• You need a roller. To really get your lawn to bend, you need a roller to follow up your mowing. You can buy a pricey commercial roller just like they use at the ballfield, or you can make one yourself. Check out our DIY directions for building your own lawn stripes mowing attachment.

Lawn stripes take a little work, but they’re beautiful enough to be worth it.

1. Scythes. When the Grim Reaper isn’t gathering souls, his scythe is actually a useful, age-old tool for cutting grass. Author Marcel Theroux recently adopted a scythe for cutting the grass in his small backyard, and writes with enthusiasm of “the way that it turns a tiresome chore into a moving meditation….Figuring out how to use it makes you aware of the structure of your own body in a way that I would compare with yoga or tai chi.” The scything videos he points to are, as he promises, fairly mesmerizing.
2. Sheep. Why cut your lawn when you can get our four-hooved friends to do it for you? Sheep (and/or goats) have been trimming grass for generations. A couple of sheep can keep an average yard fully clipped (as one sheep-as-lawn-mower tester proved), but they’re not exactly precision instruments. Flowers, small trees, and all sorts of other plants you might prefer not be chewed down also catch their eye.
3. Reel mowers. You may remember the old-fashioned, manually-powered reel mowers from your grandparents’ days. If so, you probably remember them being clunky, wobbly, hard-to-push or otherwise not so hot. Turns out, reel mowers have gotten a lot better in the last fifty years. If you have a smaller yard, a reel mower may be perfect for you.

Sheep and scythes and reel mowers may not be for everyone, but if you’re hoping to ditch your gasoline lawn mower, one of those options may be just the thing.

1. Log on to Twitter and follow Bob Vila and VinylSidingZone (follow these links and select the “+Follow” buttons on each–http://twitter.com/#!/bobvila and http://twitter.com/#!/vinylsidingzone).
2. Tomorrow at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern, tweet your questions, and follow the tweeting from the experts.

That’s it! In the meantime, you can get started with questions by tweeting with the hasthag #GetReadyThurs. This time around, don’t miss your chance to chat with the experts.

How to follow the Twitter chat

To get in on it, head on over to Twitter and follow both Bob Vila and VinylSidingZone (Click on http://twitter.com/#!/bobvila and http://twitter.com/#!/vinylsidingzone and select the +Follow” button for each). Then tomorrow, follow the tweeting. Bob and the other experts will be chatting about home exteriors and improvements. So while it may not be straight up lawn and garden, it’s the sort of conversation that can really help you with projects around the house.

In the meantime, you can jump into the conversation with the Twitter hashtage #GetReadyThurs. Start with the questions now, find out what other people are going to be asking, and get excited. It’s like your very own vintage This Old House moment.

One thing I’d love to ask about: outdoor lighting. Now that summer is officially here, there’s nothing quite like an evening spent lingering out in the yard. We’ve got a few ideas about outdoor lighting here on All About Lawns, but I bet Bob Vila has a few tips and tricks as well…

#GetReadyThurs outdoor lighting recommendations, anyone?

1. Forget corners. You can cut your lawn mowing time dramatically by adjusting your landscape design. Change the square angles of your planting beds to curves and replace those tight corners with gentle arcs, and voila! No more tricky edging, no more picking up the lawn mower for tight turns. Just push and go.
2. Forget bagging. Mulching lawn mowers–a.k.a. mowers that cut your lawn clippings and shoot them back out on the lawn–are better for your grass, and they cut lawn mowing time, too! Save yourself those minutes you would spend emptying the bag of collected clippings, and give your lawn back some nutrients.
3. Mow when it’s dry. Pushing a lawn mower across a wet lawn is trouble. First and foremost, wet lawns are slipperier, which can be dangerous, and which, in turn, means you have to slow down to stay safe. Next, any type of fungus or lawn disease spreads more easily with wet clippings than dry ones. Things are speedier, safer, and healthier with dry lawn mowing.

Lawn mowing can be a pleasure, but that doesn’t mean you want it to go on all afternoon. With adjustments like these, you can get the lawn mower in and out and get back to enjoying your yard.

1. How well established is your yard? A lot of the heavy lifting in a yard comes up front. Seeding or sodding a new lawn, renovating your soil, installing hardscaping–all of that takes serious muscle and time. If you have a new yard, give the idea of hiring professional lawn care or landscaping help a little extra consideration.
2. What are your travel plans? While you’re out of town, your lawn won’t mow itself. If you plan to be away, some basic mowing, watering, and weeding help will keep your yard from going native before you get back.
3. How’s your fitness? Yard work is hard work. Don’t pretend your knees or your back or whatever it is that ails you can handle it if it can’t. Some tasks, like pushing a lawn mower, may be fine. Other tasks, like weeding your flower beds, may not be. You can hire targeted help.
4. What’s your budget? The good news is that professional lawn care and landscaping help doesn’t have to be expensive. A weekly lawn mowing visit from the teenager up the street can be a real life saver without breaking the bank. Before you rule out hiring help because of cost, call around and get some quotes. You may be surprised by how affordable professional help can be.

Don’t let lawn maintenance be an all-or-nothing proposition. Even a little help with the yardwork can save your lawn, your back and your sanity.

5 lawn mower safety tips

1. Make sure your lawn mower is in good working order. The blades should be sharp. The safety shield should be well-secured. The chutes should all be cleared.
2. Disconnect the spark plugs when servicing your lawn mower. The only way to make sure there’s no chance your lawn mower will turn on when you’re working on it is to disconnect its power source. Disconnect the spark plugs, and you’re safe.
3. Clear the lawn. Before you turn on the mower, clear the lawn of debris like branches or toys. And make sure kids and pets are nowhere to be seen.
4. Mow when your lawn is dry. Your lawn is more slippery when it’s wet, and as the Clemson University Extension Services points out, wet clippings are more likely to clog your mower. A dry lawn is always safer.
5. Wear the right clothing. Never wear shorts while mowing. Ditto for open-toed shoes

A lawn mower does not have to be a dangerous tool. Pay attention to these guidelines and avoid accidents.

What’s a neighbor to do? This week, one Florida man demonstrated exactly what you shouldn’t do, and that is go over to your neighbor’s house uninvited, start mowing his lawn, and when asked to leave, refuse. What happened next involved the police and tasers.

So if forcible lawn mowing isn’t an option, what’s a neighbor who doesn’t want to live next door to a lawn and garden disaster to do? Here are a few less aggressive suggestions.

1. Knock on your neighbor’s front door. A little neighborly conversation can go a long way. You can genially suggest that it looks like your neighbor could use a hand with his yard. Next can come a card for a local lawn care service, an offer of help, or your teenager’s phone number (Johnny needs an afterschool job anyway!)
2. If you have a homeowner’s association to turn to, commencing turning. Some neighborhoods have yard maintenance policies. If you live in a community with a homeowner’s association, take a look at the standards and give the board a heads up about your neighbor.
3. Build a fence. Good fences make good neighbors, wrote Robert Frost, and it’s true. Should suggestions #1 and #2 fail you, a visual barrier from the unsightly yard can cool your blood pressure and also keep weed seeds from blowing into your yard.

Here’s the easy one-word answer: no.

In fact, the procrastinators among us are doing our lawns a favor, because the best time of day for lawn mowing is actually early evening. Not just because you are far less likely to upset the neighbors with your mowing at 6 p.m. than you are at 6 a.m. but for several other reasons.

Mowing the grass: what time of day is best?

1. Morning: First off, your lawn is likely to be wet in the morning, thanks to dew. And mowing a wet lawn is asking for trouble. You can rip up grass more easily when it is wet, and lawn disease is more likely to spread when your blades and the lawn are wet. So morning is out.
2. Noon: What about noon? Actually, when the sun is at its peak, mowing can stress your lawn. Your grass is busy photosynthesizing and trying to keep in moisture. Cut off the tips of the grass in the heat of the day, and you’ll practically hear it whimper.
3. Evening: Morning and lunchtime are out, which brings us to late afternoon/early evening. Mow your lawn then, and the grass is likely to be dry. Mow your lawn then, and the sun is less likely to sap the grass’s moisture. Mow your lawn then, and it has plenty of time to recover before it has to stand up to the sun again the next day.

So procrastination is a good thing! Just as long as you don’t put off mowing till so late you need headlights for your lawn mower…