5 Tips You Should Know When Using A Robotic Lawn Mower For The First Time

A robotic lawn mower is undoubtedly a genius invention and can enhance the beauty of your lawn. Due to their advance nature, robotic lawn mowers provide better lawn mowing services than ordinary ones. Nevertheless, if you’re using a robotic lawn mower for the first time, keep the following tips in minds.

Mid-mornings and early evenings are the best time for mowing!

It’s crucial to maintain a healthy lawn by only mowing at the right time of day and in the right temperature. Cutting the grass is best done in the early evening or, if you have a robotic mower, in the morning or early afternoon. Mowing during these periods, especially in the Summer, requires extra caution.

After a new cutting, the grass is especially vulnerable to drying out. Water is lost rapidly near the grass’s cut edge when the sun is intense and the air is heated. The roots are unable to make up for the loss fast enough, so the tips dry out, burn, and turn yellow. As a result, your lawn appears dull and lifeless.

Mowing should therefore be avoided during times of high heat and direct sunlight. The middle of the day and afternoon, especially in the summer, are not ideal times to mow the lawn.

Optimize the edge of the lawn

Even the best robotic lawn mowers have difficulty mowing the edges of a lawn. If you don’t want grass to grow near the edge, you’ll probably have to do it by hand. Even though there are robotic mowers that include an edge mowing feature, the lawn’s perimeter isn’t always neatly trimmed.

Stone edging is an easy solution to this problem. These stones are laid flat on the ground and run along the perimeter of the grass. This way, they clearly separate the grass from the flower beds, bushes, or ponds. To go to the very edge of the lawn, the robotic mower needs to be able to drive over the edge and onto the boundary stones.

Remove objects from the lawn

It’s possible for the blades of the robotic mower to get damaged by objects lying about on the lawn. Stones, as you may guess, are not the best material for blades. Even some of the best robotic lawn mowers can suffer at the hands of objects lying around.

Modern mowers with blade discs are designed not to snap when they encounter hard things, but the blades will still eventually wear out. Even larger stones can cause mechanical failure in other types of robotic mowers with mowing crosses.

But even fallen fruit, black walnuts, pine cones, or tree roots accelerate the blades’ deterioration. The blades don’t crack or chip, but they do become dull rapidly due to their hardness. If you wanted to cut wood, you wouldn’t use a kitchen knife, right?

However, the engine also takes a hit if foreign objects frequently force the rotor to slow somewhat due to entry into the mower. Finally, if the robotic mower has to perform too much labor, it will drain the battery faster. Having a lot of leaves on the grass is also a possible cause of this.

Lay the boundary wire correctly

So that the robotic mower can do a good job of cutting the grass, it’s important to keep a few things in mind when installing the boundary wire. To begin, the boundary wire shouldn’t have too acute angles. If not, the robotic mower will have trouble maneuvering around obstacles.  and will not be able to provide optimum lawn mowing services. It’s preferable to choose a corner angle that is at least 90 degrees and round off the edges a bit.

 In addition, you need to watch where the boundary wire goes, so it doesn’t come into contact with any electrical lines. Like the boundary wire, the power cable creates an electromagnetic field. The robotic lawnmower may become agitated. If it has already turned around, for instance, it might not be able to access the back half of the lawn.

You still have to fertilize!

There’s a common misconception that lawns that are mulched no longer require fertilizer. That is not true, I’m afraid. Not all the lawn’s nutritional needs can be met by the nutrients provided by decomposing cuttings. Nitrogen is very scarce, despite its vital role.

Mulch mowing, on the other hand, can reduce fertilizer consumption by 30–40 percent. There are specialized fertilizers for robotic mowers that aim to fill in the nutritional shortages. For the same reason that the lawn is lacking in nitrogen, they are exceptionally nutrient-dense.

For the first year of robotic mower use, fertilize twice: once in the spring and once in the summer. The subsequent years just need one early summer fertilization. Scarifying and aerating the soil prepares it for fertilization.

Be mindful of these tips if you’re using a robotic lawn mower for the very first time, only then will the mower be able to provide you optimal lawn mowing services.

Photo by Petar Tonchev on Unsplash