In this instructional video, Will Kelly walks viewers through the practical steps for achieving an optimal lawn‑mowing cut using the 1/3‑inch rule. He begins by cutting a short strip of grass to gauge the current height, emphasizing that only about one‑third of an inch of clippings should be removed each pass. He advises starting the cut immediately at the strip for efficiency and explains why cutting too short or too long can damage the lawn. Kelly then outlines a gate‑first strategy: identify the gate location and mow the opposite side first, allowing a smooth, time‑saving rotation toward the backyard. Finally, he demonstrates how to adjust the mower’s deck height on a wheel‑by‑wheel basis, showing the numeric settings (e.g., 2.5) and the simple pull‑back‑and‑click method for lowering or raising each wheel, ensuring both sides are even before resuming the cut.
Chapters
The very first thing that we need to do is cut just a little strip of grass to see our height. As far as the starting point goes, the truck is parked right here. I always recommend just starting immediately right where the grass strip is for best efficiency. This is the strip that we cut. As you can see, it's still lush green. If you look at the clippings, Okay, this is about a third of an inch of grass clippings. This is one-third of an inch on average is all we want to take off. Okay, right now we are on a weekly rotation, but during the spring and fall, we're every other week. All we're doing is taking one-third of an inch off. Overgrown yards are different, but most of our customers are recurring. So you just want to cut a couple feet. You don't want to cut the whole thing because if you're cutting too short, you're going to damage the lawn. If you're not cutting enough, and it's going to cause more problems as well. Starting point here, first thing, we're going to focus on the strip first, and then we're going to identify where the gate is. So on this specific lawn, the gate is on the right side of the property, so we actually want to cut the left side first. You always want to do the opposite of the gate so that way as you start to rotate, you can make your way into the backyard. Otherwise you're going to waste time and extra steps. If you do need to change the height of the mower on this mower, you actually have to adjust basically every single wheel. So right now it's on— if you could see— 3, 2, 1 should be down here. So right now it's on 2.5. This wheel over here is also on 2.5. Now if we wanted to drop this down, all you do is pull this plastic piece back and then drop it down until it sits inside of that knob. So we're going to do the same thing over here. You have to do it to both wheels to make sure that it's even. In the back here, if you need to adjust the wheels, it's kind of hard to see, but you've got, uh, 1 over here, uh, and then you've got 2, down here is 3. But if you need to go down, just pull this back until it clicks into the next knob. You're going to do the same, but we're going to go ahead and pull this and drop it down. And that's how you adjust the height. But I'm going to go ahead and put it back because it looks like we were cutting on 2.5 and that Good.
