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”.

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.