Hello I'm Austin Jarrett from Allett Mowers. Today we're going to be talking about
how to achieve the best striped lawns. It's quite a long video so please take
a look at the index by the side you can jump to the sections that you want
and we'll also put that below as well. So each year Allett has a striped lawn creative
competition and you go to our facebook page to see more details about the next competition.
We get absolutely amazing entries of striped lawns from all around the world and I really
do encourage you after you've learned how to get the best striped lawn today I really encourage
you to enter that competition. We at Allett think that lawn stripes are fantastic and we're really
really good at them with our products. So let's look at why you would want stripes on your lawn.
How about just bringing some element of order. The lawn is almost like the canvas
of your garden and by just bringing a bit of order to it we think it makes it look great.
You might want to put stripes in to actually highlight a feature of your lawn and draw your
eye to that particular feature. One thing that you might see in this lawn is that the stripes
actually help cover the imperfections the sort of small groupings of the weeds the bare patches,
the urine patches whatever on the lawn and it does help just take the eye away from those.
I mean if you're going to be doing some mowing you want to do it well. You want to do it the
best you possibly can and I think the lawn stripes are really part of that and you know let's face it
it's about a sense of pride in what it is that you do. If you enjoy mowing the lawn then you
know why not dominate the local neighbourhood anyway it's about lawn domination right?
So how are lawn stripes actually achieved? You can see dark green stripe on this side light green
stripe on this side and the way that these stripes are created is simply the lay of the grass.
This grass each plant is laying towards you. On this side where it's looking light the plant is
laying towards me so what happens is is the light is reflecting off the back of the leaf to you so
it looks really light and on this side the stripe looks dark because you're looking into the ends of
the plants and the light is not reflecting you're looking into the shadow underneath the grass
and that's why it looks darker green. So how are these achieved? It's really about rollers
rollers are the way to achieve this. At Allett we have rollers on the each of our cylinder mowers in
fact even our rotary mowers have rear rollers because the stripe is so important it's about
the Allett stripe. But you can achieve this with rotary mowers with rear rollers with even flaps at
the back of mowers which just help lay the grass down. So let's look ever so briefly at what it is
that affects how good the stripes are on a lawn. To start off with we really need good
healthy plants and we need lots of them so the darker green the grass is the healthier the plant
,the number of plants that we've got per square metre are all things that will add up to make a
much stronger stripe. So you need to be looking up things about the right levels of fertiliser,
the right amount of water, how deep are the roots going on the plant so they can go and
get nutrients and water when they need it and also I have to say low levels of thatch.
You really need to keep on top of your thatch if you've got springy grass it's much more difficult
to get a good folded leaf and therefore a really good strong stripe. At the end of the
day yellow patchy grass does not make really good stripes so we need healthy plants to start with.
The next thing is you need to have a cylinder mower. It's about the lawn mower
and a cylinder mower creates the best stripes. I will completely accept that if you have a rotary
mower with a rear roller on and you cut regularly enough and at the correct height
you can really achieve some great stripes too and the longer the grass gets
then it's probably more appropriate than using a rotary mower with a rear roller.
With a rotary mower you do get slight variations in the
colour of the stripe across its width and that's because the blade is turning and
on one side it's going forwards one side is going backwards so you don't get the
full colour on the stripe and therefore the full contrast that you that you really deserve
if you're going for great stripes but please see our video that talks about cylinders versus rotary
mowers and what you'll do is you'll find quite a section in that video about that.
Not only is it about the mower and the type of mower that you're using we need the roller
but it's also about the weight and if you look at these two products both of them stripe really well
but this machine is just so much heavier and what it does is lay down a stronger stripe
and it's not only that it's about how long that stripe lasts so a really good strong
stripe just lasts longer you will see it after two and three days and the heavier mower is
the reason why that will happen. The next thing that really affects the contrast of the stripes
how deep green how light green you can get this is actually not to do with the grass and
the mowing but to do with your position of you and your view of the grass relative to the sun.
So I'm looking directly into the sun right now your back is to the sun and that is the best
position for you to see the contrast of the stripe so I'm getting really nice dark green
really light green on this side. But see what happens when you take a journey around to the
back of me and you're looking into the sun like I am right now. We'll change positions.
So to me the stripe is actually looking stronger than ever before because I have the sun behind me.
You are now looking into the sun and you're not getting the reflection and the shadows to the
same extent so that now this isn't looking so dark and this isn't looking so light.
The next thing that affects the contrast of the stripe is the length of the grass. If
you go really really short drop these mowers down to their lowest height of cut the grass
plant not only doesn't lay over so much but it also flips back upright again much more quickly
and by cutting the grass at a higher height of cut
the plant lies down more and it stays down for longer so you end up with a longer lasting stripe.
So keep your height of cut at a very reasonable height lots of leaf still showing and that way
you'll get a more contrasting stripe. Height of cut does affect the contrast of the stripe.
So just to demonstrate three different heights of cut and the striping that happens at the different
heights and the effect on the leaf lying down. Not a perfect experiment but I think it helps
us just to illustrate. So we take we took this Allett Liberty and we set this at height number
one which is about 10 12 millimetres high this grass isn't normally kept at this sort of height
but you can see relatively little striping effect. When we then take it to about 22 millimetres this
is about two and a half on this Liberty 43 setting you can see now i'm starting to get a height of
cut effect on my striping. But when we take it up to maximum height of cut at 32 millimetres
you'll see that there is actually more contrast in these stripes than certain there are in either of
those two so i i think that shows the point. The final thing I think that really has a major effect
on the striping of the grass is to do with the actual grass plant itself or the variety of grass
and I'm not sure that the seed breeders actually tell us which of the grasses
stripe particularly well but I think you've got to go a long way to beat ryegrass I think
the rye grass does lay down well and stays down and I think the underside of the leaf is actually
quite shiny that's part of the identification of that plant and I'm sure that shininess on the
back of the leaf means that it reflects the light to give you the lighter stripe better than most
grasses. But if you're growing tall fescue and mowing it at four inches high then a function of
that grass is that you need to mow it quite high to survive especially in warm climates
and that stripes really well. Other grasses just won't lay down they're permanently standing
upright and unless you scarify them like mad they're building thatch and standing upright
it's very difficult to actually get the grass to lay down and stripe. So grass variety is
something that you need to look at if you're looking at changing your grass sward type.
So to wrap up the tips that we've got on lawns and just to give you lawn striping in particular
but these these are those tips. Get your lawn in really great condition that's about fertiliser
irrigation, overseeding, bare patches, weed control all the things you can see we're
battling with on this lawn but have a look at our lawn calendar on our website and you'll get lots
of great ideas for what you should be doing at what time of year. Number two is thatch control
keep that springy layer between the grass plants and the soil keep that under control it's very
difficult to get a good stripe when you're actually trying to lay those grass plants
down on that mattress of thatch so keep that under control it'll also make the grass plants healthier
make the roots go deeper allow the plants access to the fertilizer and water that you put on.
Straight lines- straight lines are so important in order to get a really impressive stripe
so use a string and lay the string out and try and choose a longer stripe that maybe is from
a particular window in your house or maybe from the entrance to your drive
and make that line absolutely dead straight. How about using double widths? If you have a smaller
mower like this but you want to achieve stripes for a mower like this then how about keeping
the stripes side by side and then side by side in the opposite direction and that way it just
makes the stripe that little bit wider. A really good tip for strong and contrasting stripes so
is burn that stripe in what do I mean by that? After you've mowed it all once in in the normal
way that you've chosen to do it how about you go over it again in the same direction and about
next time that you mow do it again in the same direction again and you'll find that the grass
starts to get trained and your stripe becomes stronger more contrasting too. The next tip is
about rakes. Get the rake set correctly. Both of these products have a rake just behind the front
roller and before the cylinder and what I can do is adjust the depth and aggressiveness of that
tine so these tines are just here behind the front roller. Set those correctly and what they'll do is
comb the grass and line up the grass plants again and it will all just help the contrasting stripes.
Finally have a think about the patterns that you put in.
Light green dark green stripes straight as an arrow look fantastic. Think about checkerboards
maybe think about circles built into your designs but if you need inspiration take a look at these
designs that we've had as past entries into our international lawn stripe competition.
So there you have it I hope you found some useful ideas in this video about how to
create even better stripes on your lawn. Take a look at our facebook page you'll find all the
entry details for our international creative lawn stripe competition we'd love to see your
entries. There's some great inspiration there as well from previous year's entries
you can find further information on our website at www.allett.co.uk and please
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Thanks