We get a lot of calls asking for advice on the best height to cut the grass. Reel mowers are very gentle on your lawn and can cut the grass shorter than needed by power rotary mowers. On Canadian lawns grass is best cut from 1 to 3 inches. Since most Canadian grass varieties tend to bend over once they reach about 4 inches you will have a difficult time having a neat looking lawn if you try to keep it long using a reel mower. Most golf courses cut their fairways using gang reel mowers and the fairways remain healthy even in dry weather so don’t be a slave to advice to keep your grass high in dry weather. Most recommendations for high grass in dry conditions come from research on power rotary mowers which stress and bruise the grass. Practical experience on countless golf courses proves it is safe to keep your lawn a bit shorter in dry weather. A shorter cutting height will help you keep your lawn looking even and groomed- reel mowers depend on the grass being upright when it is cut so make sure you cut once the grass has grown 1/3 higher than when it was cut.

Find the ‘Sweet Spot”. Although the NaturCut and Brill mowers come ready to cut from the factory we advise taking a few minutes to fine tune the blade gap for your lawn. Every reel mower will require some overlap in the cutting pattern to produce the best results but if you find that a few grass blades are left uncut across the whole swath (too much gap) or that your mower is binding on the grass or leaving a scalloped pattern (too little gap) then you should adjust the blade gap. This is a simple procedure outlined in our Support Section under the tab “Walter’s Simple Adjustment Method”.

We are happy to be the Canadian dealer for the Tumbleweed Composters. These are an incredibly popular item at Clean Air Gardening in the US and we decided to bring them to Canada because of the Tumbleweed’s ability to produce compost so quickly. With our short season its critical to produce compost quickly to avoid those huge piles of ‘good intentions’. Available now for immediate delivery. We also include a free box (with 6 sachets) of BioWish Compost Booster to supply you for the season.

Non contact reel mowers have always had a problem cutting dandelions. Their leaves are just thin enough that the mowers tend to leave most dandelion leaves uncut. NaturCut has tested their blades and will now allow users to adjust the rotating blades until they just touch the stationary blade. This might not seem like much but it is a VERY BIG DEAL! By using your NaturCut reel mower with the gap adjusted to zero the mower will still perform like normal but will finally allow you to cut dandelion leaves successfully.

NaturCut Mowers for 2010. The NaturCut mowers are our most popular mowers. They are great for average and large sized lawns- light enough to be easy to push and heavy enough not to skip over thick patches of lawn. Although not as pretty as the Brills, the NaturCuts represent all the best things of push mowers. The build quality is exceptional with a complaint rate approaching zero.

New stock Mantis stock in for 2010! We sold out of Mantis Tillers 4 times last year. It was our first year selling Mantis and we sold way more than we anticipated (or even what the Mantis rep thought possible). This year we are offering a very sweet deal: in addition to the Mantis promo items of a free Border Edger with a 2 cycle Mantis tiller and a free Border Edger and free Kickstand with a 4 cycle Honda Powered Mantis tiller we are offering our own bonus- a free set of weed reducers with every tiller. Weed Reducers are one of those little accessories that get ignored but the people who get them really love them. So now our customers will get a free set to make owning their Mantis even more enjoyable.