Facts you never knew about mowing

Next time you enter a trivia contest in a local or favorite eatery, you’ll be prepared when the questions get around to lawns. How often does this happen? Do the questions ever get around to lawns?

Well, truth be told, the questions never get around to mowing or lawns. But they could! Right?

Some little-known stuff about lawns (just in case!)

Pink Flamingos are the most popular lawn ornament. They are cute. An estimated 250,000 are sold each year (that’s a quarter of a million)! OK, maybe not THAT cute.

Grasslands make up over 20% of the plants that cover the earth. Not only that, but grass occurs on every continent.

Grass is OLD. Really old. It might be one of the oldest organisms that humans have discovered. So far.

Grass is about 75 to 80% water by weight. The majority of that weight is in the roots.

Watering the lawn can be expensive, especially in the summer, when each household might use as much as 238 gallons of water per day, just during the summer months.

A beautiful lawn can increase a home’s property value by around 15%. But, of course, this requires a lot of maintenance.

About 80,000 people a year are hospitalized with lawn mowing-related injuries in the United States. That alone sounds like an excellent reason to hire a landscaping team like Divine Lawns.

Heathy grass sucks in pollutants such as carbon dioxide, ozone, soot, and dirt from the air hanging over your lawn. Then it spits out oxygen at a remarkable rate. A 50’ X 50’ lawn can supply enough oxygen for a family of four for a whole day!

While rain might be rain, it can also be harmful if accompanied by a thunderstorm. These seasonal storms may act as a flash flood on your lawn. For example, a dry lawn and suddenly enough water make your lawn struggle to keep the tops of the blades of grass above the water. To make matters worse, these happen and end so quickly that the water may not penetrate to the roots, and the sprinklers may still need to run!

What do you do if you are walking barefoot on pavement and it suddenly feels too hot? Head for the nearest lawn! Yes, the grass can be as much 68° cooler than the sidewalk. Combining the cooling power of eight average lawns has more cooling effect than about 70 tons of air conditioning.

Let’s move on to…

Little known stuff about Mowers!

Lawnmowers are usually powered by hand, by electricity, or by fuel. There are some pedal-powered ones, but they are hard to find. There are also various combinations of these, although you probably won’t find most of the combination types at the regular garden stores.

Lawnmowers were first patented in England in 1830 (some historians say 1827). Edwin Budding invented it to replace the scythe. He also deserves credit for inventing the adjustable screw spanner (wrench) in 1842.

Robotic lawnmowers are becoming increasingly popular, although ride-on mowers are most famous for large areas.

Mowers became more popular as the popularity of lawn sports rose. The lawnmower was much more popular than the scythe and became more popular than using grazing animals to keep the grass short. The first riding mowers were chain-driven mowers pulled by animals. Using animals to take care of grass has some disadvantages, but it does produce a beautiful turf.

The clippings left by the mower can stay on the grass. It will decompose and return nutrients to the soil. This does not add to thatch buildup, it decomposes too quickly, and grass blades are composed of about 75% water.

Mowers are machines; some are rather powerful machines. The British government used to require a driver’s license for operating mowers. If you live in New York State, the New York police have used unmarked lawn mowers for roadside radar speed recording. Who knew?

Enough Trivia?

Now you have all this incredibly wonderful information about lawns and mowers swimming through your brain, waiting for the next trivia contest. But, of course, you will ROCK that contest if it ever happens – Thanks Divine Lawns!