Karl Johnson, a turf manager from Hamilton, New Zealand with 30 years of experience, shows how to create striped lawn patterns using a cylinder mower, rotary mower attachments, and a household broom.
Foreign guys, I'm Karl Johnson, better known as kj, Turf manager, Centre Park, Hamilton, New Zealand. I have over 30 years turf management experience. Over all those years, the most common question I get asked is, how do you get the stripes in your grass? Most people think that we cut the grass at different heights, but imagine how a cricket ball would bounce across the field. The actual answer might surprise you. So let's head out to my lawn and I'll show you how to do it. First, you'll need a real mower or cylinder mower such as this. You can use the more common rotary mower, but you might not get the same effect. You using your mower, you're going to mow it in one direction. As an example, you're going to mow from north to south. Turn around, come back south to north. The way that this works is that with the mower going over the stripes, it lays down the grass leaf and gives you that beautiful striping effect. This technique can be used all sorts of patterns, up and down, diamonds, circles. Go on, come up with a fantastic pattern. I want to see them. If you're using a rotary mower, you can actually get attachments that hook on the back that will give you the same striping effect. If you don't have a real mower or attachment behind your rotary. I've got a little tip I want to share. Grab yourself the household broom. Come along, I'll show you how you do it. Here's my super tip for the day. Just going to push my broom that way. Turn around, give it the stripes on the way back. Look at that. Outstanding. I've got to work hard. Working hard. There we go. And back. Like what I said before, north to south, south to north. Look at that. That's outstanding. Mowing in those stripes for the first time. After a few days, the grass will stand up. Keep mowing in the same direction and you'll start to make those stripes really pop. Another little tip for when you're first mowing in your stripes. Put down a string line and use that as a guideline so you get them nice and straight. So there you are, folks. It's pretty easy, really. Let's see those beautiful stripes on your legendary lawn. That's how the Aussies practice their cricket bowling. Got it.
