Striping Information

After different lawn company owners visiting my web site saw my website pictures, they started emailing me and asking me, how do you make the lawns look like you do and wanted to know how to make the striping patterns. I then realized, not everyone mows like I do in all parts of the country. After emailing several lawn companies I realized I needed a better way of letting others know how to do this, so I dedicated a page on my website to showing others how to put this striping pattern in lawns like they do at baseball fields.

This way of mowing probably has several different names, but the affect is all the same. I feel it makes lawns look better and they stand out from the rest on the block. It also makes the person mowing the lawn look like a professional when you get done mowing a lawn this way. When you have an odd shaped lot, it seems to take less time to mow it at angles. There are 4 basic stripe patterns you can put in a lawn.

(1) Front to back

(2) Side to side

(3) Angle from the left in the front to the right in the back

(4) Angle from the right in the front to the left in the back

If you will notice in the 2 pictures of me mowing you can see how going different directions changes the color of the grass to make the striping affect on a lawn. It bends the grass one direction giving it a light color going away and a dark color affect coming back. Try to keep your lines as straight as possible to get the best-looking lawn. I mow one direction one week and the opposite direction the next week so you are mowing at a 90 degrees angle of the previous week. The 3rd week I mow in the same direction as the first week and drive in the same tracks. Just keep alternating the pattern each week. After about 2 months of doing this I will start to put in the 3^rd or 4^th striping patterns so you can see the stripes from any angle you look at the lawns.

The lawns in these two pictures are being mowed with out a striping kit. To get the best stripes, make sure your mower has the proper deck pitch, which is when the front of the deck is ¼” lower in the front than in the back of the deck.

Dixie Chopper also has a kit to put on your Dixie Choppers that has chains that hang down from a piece of angle iron that bolts to the wheel motor mounts, which helps to accent the stripes on a lawn. I have one on the 2001 XWD2600 and it does make a difference. It drags the chains along behind the mower to help lay the grass down to accent the stripes and the kit also is nice to help break up the cores after core aerating a lawn. If you ever aerate a lawn and then over seed it, this kit also helps cover up the seed. This striping kit also works great for new lawn seed applications. I go over the seeded lawn to drag the dirt over the new seed to cover it up with dirt. Below is a lawn cut with the new XWD2600 with a striping kit so you can see the difference it makes. Happy striping to all.

You can see what a striping kit looks like in the picture below.

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