A head keeps its spray pattern
A pop up head sits just above the soil, and a trimmer takes the top off one in a single pass. Grass is cut back around a head instead of over it, so the head keeps its arc and the zone keeps its coverage.
Service
String trimming
A mower deck cuts open lawn and stops at the first obstacle. Trimming covers everything the deck has to steer around, which is why the two run on the same visit and why a finished lawn is one height across the whole property.
- Included in
- Every scheduled maintenance visit
- Trimmed around
- Fences, posts, mailboxes, A/C units and pool equipment
- Worked around
- Tree trunks, sprinkler heads and valve box lids
- Booked with
- Mowing, edging and blowing off, on the same visit
01
The trimming visit
What gets trimmed on every visit
Trimming is not a separate booking and it does not get dropped when a visit is running long. It is the difference between a lawn that has been cut and a lawn that has been finished.
- Fence lines are trimmed on the sides we can reach. Grass grows into a fence where no deck can follow it, so the trimmer takes it back to the foot of the panel or the bottom of the chain link.
- Posts, mailboxes and lamp posts get a pass of their own. Anything set into the lawn is cut to the height of the mown grass, so it does not stand in a tuft of its own.
- Growth is cut back off A/C units, pool equipment and pump housings. It comes off the pad and away from the sides of a condenser, which needs clear air around it to work properly.
- Tree rings and the base of palms are worked around, not into. The line stays at the outer edge of the ring and never runs against the trunk.
- The trimmer runs along walls, foundations and under low shrubs. That includes the strip under the skirt of a low hedge, where grass runs in and then leans out again once the lawn is cut.
- Sprinkler heads and valve box lids are trimmed around. Grass growing over a head is cut back so the spray is not blocked, and the head itself is left alone.
02
Trees and bark
A string trimmer against a trunk does permanent damage
This is the most common injury a tree in a lawn takes, it is done a little at a time by people who are looking after the yard, and it does not heal.
The living tissue that moves water up from the roots and sugar down from the canopy sits in a thin layer immediately under the bark. A trimmer line running at speed strips bark off the base of a trunk, and that layer goes with it. It does not grow back. Each visit takes a little more, and when the damage finally runs the whole way round the trunk the path between the roots and the leaves is cut.
What follows is slow enough that nobody connects the two. The canopy thins from the top down over several years, limbs die back, and a tree that was healthy is taken out for reasons nobody traces to a lawn tool.
The fix is not careful trimming. It is keeping the trimmer away from the trunk altogether, and that means stopping the grass short of the tree rather than cutting grass that grows against it.
How trees are handled
- Each tree gets a ring. A band of mulch or bare soil between the grass and the trunk means there is nothing to trim near the bark in the first place.
- The trimmer works to the outside of the ring. The line stays over grass and never reaches the flare at the base of the trunk.
- A ring keeps the mower off as well. Wheels and decks against surface roots are the other common way a lawn tree gets hurt.
- Mulch is kept off the trunk itself. Material piled against bark holds moisture against it, and bark that stays wet rots.
03
Sprinklers and boxes
Sprinkler heads are worked around, not over
An irrigation system is easy to damage with a trimmer, and a broken head shows up as a brown patch two weeks later. The parts that matter all sit at ground level, which is exactly where the line is running.
Valve box lids stay findable
Grass grows over a valve box until nobody can find it, which matters on the day a zone has to be shut off. The lids are trimmed around and left where they can be seen.
Anything hidden goes on the notes
Low voltage lighting, a well head, a drip line or a buried pet fence is easy to miss on a first visit. Point it out and it goes on the notes for the property, so the crew knows next time.
04
Trimming and mowing together
How trimming and mowing finish a lawn together
Neither job finishes a property on its own. Run on the same visit they leave one height across the whole lot with no strip of tall grass anywhere.
A mower deck is built to cut a wide even pass across open lawn. It has to stop wherever there is an obstacle, and it cannot cut closer to a fence or a wall than its own housing allows. Everything the deck steers around is what the trimmer exists for.
That is why the two are never split across separate visits. A lawn mowed one week and trimmed the next never looks right in either week: there is a collar of long grass around the mailbox, a line of it down the fence, and a strip under the hedge that the deck could not reach.
Trimming is also what lets the edging read. The trimmer takes growth off the top of the concrete and the edger cuts the line down into the ground, and it is those two together that give a maintained lawn a visible boundary where a mowed one usually has a fade.
05
The rest of the visit
Trimming goes out with three other jobs
These three run on the same visit as the trimming. Together the four of them are the regular maintenance schedule.
Free quotes
Tell us what is out there in the yard
Call us and we will come out and walk the property. Show us the fence line, the trees, the equipment pads and the sprinkler heads, and we will tell you what we would do and how often. There is no obligation once you have it.
Seven days a week, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Email cjackc.inc@gmail.com.